Combating Fake News: Stakeholder Interventions and Potential Solutions

The fake news 'infodemic', facilitated by social media and mobile message sharing platforms, has progressed from causing a nuisance to seriously impacting law and order through deliberate and large-scale manipulation of public sentiments. There are social, religious, political, and economic dimensions to the fake news phenomenon, providing enough motivation for interested parties to push biased opinions, claims, conspiracies and fraud to many naïve information consumers. The ease with which fake news can be created and propagated makes it extremely challenging to detect and mitigate. To combat the fake news, the researchers have utilized mechanisms which are largely based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms and social network analysis. However, no viable solution has yet been deployed at a scale. This paper present a comprehensive survey on combating fake news and evaluates the challenges involved in its detection with the help of existing detection mechanisms and techniques to control its spread. The challenges associated with combating fake news have been addressed based on the various aspects such as psychological, economic, and technical. Furthermore, we consider the fake news combat spectrum to analyze the stakeholder interventions due to the spread of fake news. Finally, various technology-based solutions have been presented for combating fake news and the associated future challenges and opportunities.