Fake News
Fake news is a type of hoax published in news media with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically. If often employs eye-catching headlines or entirely fabricated news-stories in order to increase readership and online sharing through social media. Profit is made in a similar fashion to clickbait and relies on ad-revenue generated regardless of the veracity of the published stories. Easy access to ad-revenue, increased political polarization and the ubiquity of the Facebook newsfeed have been implicated in the spread of fake news. Anonymously hosted websites lacking known publishers have also been implicated, because they make it difficult to prosecute sources of fake news for slander. Fake news is similar to the concept of yellow journalism and political propaganda, frequently employing the same strategies used by early 20th century penny presses.In late 2016 fake news gained notoriety following the uptick in news-content in the Facebook newsfeed, and its prevalence on the micro-blogging site Twitter. With a large portion of Americans using Facebook or Twitter to receive news, in combination with increased political polarization, filter bubbles, the tendency for readers to mainly read headlines - fake news was implicated in influencing the 2016 American presidential election. Fake news saw higher sharing on Facebook than legitimate news stories, which analysts explained was because fake news often panders to expectations or is otherwise more exciting than legitimate news. Fake news is often spread through the use of fake news websites, specializing in made up attention-grabbing news, while often impersonating widely known news sources in order to gain credibility. Fake news items have occasionally spread from such sites to more well-established news-sites resulting in scandals including "Pizzagate".