The Cost of Fake News
While the "fake news" issue is currently a hot topic, it's been a problem in the business world for a long time. A bad news story can cause plummeting stock prices, destroy the reputation of a business, or cause unreasonable customer expectations. Unethical businesses can also generate fake news or reviews in order to boost their own stature or profits.
- What caused Facebook stock to drop the most In 10 months? (2017)This is particularly interesting in that fake news doesn't have to concern a company in order to affect it. With that said, the fake news issue has not necessarily hurt facebook directly, as the article demonstrates.
- Inside a Facebook bot farm that pumps out 200k+ political posts per monthBot farms can easily be used to inflate statistics or to maliciously malign a business.
Research Tools for Examining the Issue
- Business Economics and Theory This link opens in a new windowBusiness Economics and Theory Collection provides access to academic journals and magazines focusing on topics in economics and related fields. The database has an emphasis on titles indexed in the American Economic Association's EconLit bibliography.
- Business Source Complete This link opens in a new windowBusiness Source Complete is the world's definitive scholarly business database, providing the leading collection of bibliographic and full text content, including indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886. In addition, searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,300 journals.
Fact-Checking Tools
- Snopes.comOne of the oldest debunking sites on the Internet, Snopes focuses on urban legends, news stories and memes. They also cite their sources at the end of each debunking.
- BellingcatAn independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists brought together by a passion for open source research.
