Fake News Detection On Social Media Using Deep Learning — Complete Documentation & Simulation

Overview & System Context

Fake News Detection On Social Media Using Deep Learning: Comprehensive Web-Sourced Technical Investigation Exhaustive Research Dossier · Pure Web-Scraped Content: ~9044 Words · Real Software Screenshots: 3 1. Executive Overview & Technical Background Deepfakes (a portmanteau of 'deep learning' and 'fake') are images, videos, or audio that have been edited or generated using artificial intelligence, AI-based tools or audio-video editing software. They may depict real or fictional people and are considered a form of synthetic media, that is media that is usually created by artificial intelligence systems by combining various media elements into a new media artifact. While the act of creating fake content is not new, deepfakes uniquely leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, including facial recognition algorithms and artificial neural networks such as variational autoencoders and generative adversarial networks (GANs). In turn, the field of image forensics has worked to develop techniques to detect manipulated images. Deepfakes have garnered widespread attention for their potential use in creating child sexual abuse material, celebrity pornographic videos, revenge porn, fake news, hoaxes, bullying, and financial fraud. Academics have raised concerns about the potential for deepfakes to promote disinformation and hate speech, as well as interfere with elections. In response, the information technology industry and governments have proposed recommendations and methods to detect and mitigate their use. Academic research has also delved deeper into the factors driving deepfake engagement online as well as potential countermeasures to malicious application of deepfakes. From traditional entertainment to gaming, deepfake technology has evolved to be increasingly convincing and available to the public, allowing for the disruption of the entertainment and media industries.

Generalization. High-quality deepfakes are often achieved by training on hours of footage of the target. This challenge is to minimize the amount of training data and the time to train the model required to produce quality images and to enable the execution of trained models on new identities (unseen during training). Paired Training. Training a supervised model can produce high-quality results, but requires data pairing. This is the process of finding examples of inputs and their desired outputs for the model to learn from. Data pairing is laborious and impractical when training on multiple identities and facial behaviors. Some solutions include self-supervised training (using frames from the same video), the use of unpaired networks such as Cycle-GAN, or the manipulation of network embeddings. Identity leakage. This is where the identity of the driver (i.e., the actor controlling the face in a reenactment) is partially transferred to the generated face. Some solutions proposed include attention mechanisms, few-shot learning, disentanglement, boundary conversions, and skip connections. Occlusions. When part of the face is obstructed with a hand, hair, glasses, or any other item then artifacts can occur. A common occlusion is a closed mouth which hides the inside of the mouth and the teeth. Some solutions include image segmentation during training and in-painting. Temporal coherence. In videos containing deepfakes, artifacts such as flickering and jitter can occur because the network has no context of the preceding frames. Some researchers provide this context or use novel temporal coherence losses to help improve realism. As the technology improves, the interference is diminishing. Overall, deepfakes are expected to have several implications in media and society, media production, media representations, media audiences, gender, law, and regulation, and politics.

On 8 June 2022, Daniel Emmet, a former AGT contestant, teamed up with the AI startup Metaphysic AI, to create a hyperrealistic deepfake to make it appear as Simon Cowell. Cowell, notoriously known for severely critiquing contestants, was on stage interpreting "You're The Inspiration" by Chicago. Emmet sang on stage as an image of Simon Cowell emerged on the screen behind him in flawless synchronicity. On 30 August 2022, Metaphysic AI had 'deep-fake' Simon Cowell, Howie Mandel and Terry Crews singing opera on stage. On 13 September 2022, Metaphysic AI performed with a synthetic version of Elvis Presley for the finals of America's Got Talent. The MIT artificial intelligence project 15.ai has been used for content creation for multiple Internet fandoms, particularly on social media. In 2023 the bands ABBA and Kiss partnered with Industrial Light & Magic and Pophouse Entertainment to develop deepfake avatars capable of performing virtual concerts.

In February 2018, in separate videos, the face of the Argentine President Mauricio Macri had been replaced by the face of Adolf Hitler, and Angela Merkel's face has been replaced with Donald Trump's. In April 2018, Jordan Peele collaborated with BuzzFeed to create a deepfake of Barack Obama with Peele's voice; it served as a public service announcement to increase awareness of deepfakes. In January 2019, Fox affiliate KCPQ aired a deepfake of Trump during his Oval Office address, mocking his appearance and skin colour. The employee found responsible for the video was subsequently fired. In June 2019, the United States House Intelligence Committee held hearings on the potential malicious use of deepfakes to sway elections.

In April 2020, the Belgian branch of Extinction Rebellion published a deepfake video of Belgian Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès on Facebook. The video promoted a possible link between deforestation and COVID-19. It had more than 100,000 views within 24 hours and received many comments. On the Facebook page where the video appeared, many users interpreted the deepfake video as genuine. During the 2020 US presidential campaign, many deepfakes surfaced purporting Joe Biden in cognitive decline—falling asleep during an interview, getting lost, and misspeaking—all bolstering rumours of his decline.

During the 2020 Delhi Legislative Assembly election campaign, the Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party used similar technology to distribute a version of an English-language campaign advertisement by its leader, Manoj Tiwari, translated into Haryanvi to target Haryana voters. A voiceover was provided by an actor, and AI trained using video of Tiwari speeches was used to lip-sync the video to the new voiceover. A party staff member described it as a "positive" use of deepfake technology, which allowed them to "convincingly approach the target audience even if the candidate didn't speak the language of the voter." In 2020, Bruno Sartori produced deepfakes parodying politicians like Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump. In April 2021, politicians in a number of European countries were approached by pranksters Vovan and Lexus, who are accused by critics of working for the Russian state. They impersonated Leonid Volkov, a Russian opposition politician and chief of staff of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's campaign, allegedly through deepfake technology. However, the pair told The Verge that they did not use deepfakes, and just used a look-alike. In May 2023, a deepfake video of Vice President Kamala Harris supposedly slurring her words and speaking nonsensically about today, tomorrow and yesterday went viral on social media. In June 2023, in the United States, Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign used a deepfake to misrepresent Donald Trump. In November 2023, a deepfake video of the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announcing a plan to ban the political activities of the AfD was uploaded to YouTube by the Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Center of Political Beauty). In March 2024, during India's state assembly elections, deepfake technology was widely employed by political candidates to reach out to voters.

Many politicians used AI-generated deepfakes created by startup The Indian Deepfaker, founded by Divyendra Singh Jadoun, to translate their speeches into multiple regional languages, allowing them to engage with diverse linguistic communities across the country. This surge in the use of deepfakes for political campaigns marked a significant shift in electioneering tactics in India. In June 2025, Javier Milei's government backed a smear campaign against journalist Mengolini, which was partly based on explicit deepfakes. In July 2025, Donald Trump posted a deepfake on his Truth Social account, depicting former president Barack Obama getting arrested at the White House and put in prison.

Figure 1: AI-powered tool developed by Keele scientists can detect fake news with ... In 2017, Deepfake pornography prominently surfaced on the Internet, particularly on Reddit. As of 2019, many deepfakes on the internet feature pornography of female celebrities whose likeness is typically used without their consent. A report published in October 2019 by Dutch cybersecurity startup Deeptrace estimated that 96% of all deepfakes online were pornographic. As of 2018, a Daisy Ridley deepfake first captured attention, among others. As of October 2019, most of the deepfake subjects on the internet were British and American actors. However, around a quarter of the subjects are South Korean, the majority of which are K-pop stars. In June 2019, a downloadable Windows and Linux application called DeepNude was released that used neural networks, specifically generative adversarial networks, to remove clothing from images of women. The app had both a paid and unpaid version, the paid version costing $50. On 27 June the creators removed the application and refunded consumers. Female celebrities are often a main target when it comes to deepfake pornography. In 2023, deepfake porn videos appeared online of Emma Watson and Scarlett Johansson in a face swapping app. In 2024, deepfake porn images circulated online of Taylor Swift. Academic studies have reported that women, LGBT people and people of colour (particularly activists, politicians and those questioning power) are at higher risk of being targets of promulgation of deepfake pornography. Deepfake technology has become a tool for gender-based harassment and violence, proportionally targeting women and marginalized groups. There is an increasing ethical and equity concerns of intimidation and reputational harm intentions behind this specific media.

The liar's dividend is a political and social phenomenon in which, when faced with incriminating or embarrassing authentic video or audio recordings of themselves, individuals will claim that the recordings are AI in order to dismiss the claims and gain sympathy. 2. System Architecture & Core Working Principles Barack Obama On 17 April 2018, American actor Jordan Peele, BuzzFeed, and Monkeypaw Productions posted a deepfake of Barack Obama to YouTube, which depicted Barack Obama cursing and calling Donald Trump names. In this deepfake, Peele's voice and face were transformed and manipulated into those of Obama. The intent of this video was to portray the dangerous consequences and power of deepfakes, and how deepfakes can make anyone say anything. Donald Trump On 5 May 2019, Derpfakes posted a deepfake of Donald Trump to YouTube, based on a skit Jimmy Fallon performed on The Tonight Show. In the original skit (aired 4 May 2016), Jimmy Fallon dressed as Donald Trump and pretended to participate in a phone call with Barack Obama, conversing in a manner that presented him to be bragging about his primary win in Indiana.

In the deepfake, Jimmy Fallon's face was transformed into Donald Trump's face, with the audio remaining the same. This deepfake video was produced by Derpfakes with a comedic intent. In March 2023, a series of images appeared to show New York Police Department officers restraining Trump. The images, created using Midjourney, were initially posted on Twitter by Eliot Higgins but were later re-shared without context, leading some viewers to believe they were real photographs. Nancy Pelosi In 2019, a clip from Nancy Pelosi's speech at the Center for American Progress (given on 22 May 2019) in which the video was slowed down, in addition to the pitch of the audio being altered, to make it seem as if she were drunk, was widely distributed on social media. Critics argue that this was not a deepfake, but a shallowfakeI—Ia less sophisticated form of video manipulation. Mark Zuckerberg In May 2019, two artists collaborating with the company CannyAI created a deepfake video of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg talking about harvesting and controlling data from billions of people. The video was part of an exhibit to educate the public about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin On 29 September 2020, deepfakes of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin were uploaded to YouTube, created by a nonpartisan advocacy group RepresentUs. The deepfakes of Kim and Putin were meant to air publicly as commercials to relay the notion that interference by these leaders in US elections would be detrimental to the United States' democracy. The commercials also aimed to shock Americans to realize how fragile democracy is, and how media and news can significantly influence the country's path regardless of credibility. However, while the commercials included an ending comment detailing that the footage was not real, they ultimately did not air due to fears and sensitivity regarding how Americans may react. On 5 June 2023, an unknown source broadcast a reported deepfake of Vladimir Putin on multiple radio and television networks. In the clip, Putin appears to deliver a speech announcing the invasion of Russia and calling for a general mobilization of the army. Volodymyr Zelenskyy On 16 March 2022, a one-minute long deepfake video depicting Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy seemingly telling his soldiers to lay down their arms and surrender during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was circulated on social media. Russian social media boosted it, but after it was debunked, Facebook and YouTube removed it. Twitter allowed the video in tweets where it was exposed as a fake, but said it would be taken down if posted to deceive people. Hackers inserted the disinformation into a live scrolling-text news crawl on TV station Ukraine 24, and the video appeared briefly on the station's website in addition to false claims that Zelenskyy had fled his country's capital, Kyiv. It was not immediately clear who created the deepfake, to which Zelenskyy responded with his own video, saying, "We don't plan to lay down any arms. Until our victory." Wolf News In late 2022, pro-China propagandists started spreading deepfake videos purporting to be from "Wolf News" that used synthetic actors. The technology was developed by a London company called Synthesia, which markets it as a cheap alternative to live actors for training and HR videos. Pope Francis In March 2023, an anonymous construction worker from Chicago used Midjourney to create a fake image of Pope Francis in a white Balenciaga puffer jacket. The image went viral, receiving over twenty million views. Writer Ryan Broderick dubbed it "the first real mass-level AI misinformation case". Experts consulted by Slate characterized the image as unsophisticated: "you could have made it on Photoshop five years ago". Keir Starmer In October 2023, a deepfake audio clip of the UK Labour Party leader Keir Starmer abusing staffers was released on the first day of a Labour Party conference. The clip purported to be an audio tape of Starmer abusing his staffers. Rashmika Mandanna In early November 2023, a famous South Indian actor, Rashmika Mandanna fell prey to DeepFake when a morphed video of a famous British-Indian influencer, Zara Patel, with Rashmika's face started to float on social media. Zara Patel claims to not be involved in its creation. Bongbong Marcos In April 2024, a deepfake video misrepresenting Philippine President Bongbong Marcos was released. It is a slideshow accompanied by a deepfake audio of Marcos purportedly ordering the Armed Forces of the Philippines and special task force to act "however appropriate" should China attack the Philippines. The video was released amidst tensions related to the South China Sea dispute. The Presidential Communications Office has said that there is no such directive from the president and said a foreign actor might be behind the fabricated media. Criminal charges has been filed by the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas in relation to the deepfake media. On 22 July 2024, a video of Marcos purportedly snorting illegal drugs was released by Claire Contreras, a former supporter of Marcos. Dubbed as the polvoron video, the media noted its consistency with the insinuation of Marcos' predecessor—Rodrigo Duterte—that Marcos is a drug addict; the video was also shown at a Hakbang ng Maisug rally organized by people aligned with Duterte. Two days later, the Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation, based on their own findings, concluded that the video was created using AI; they further pointed out inconsistencies with the person on the video with Marcos, such as details on the two people's ears. Joe Biden Prior to the 2024 United States presidential election, phone calls imitating the voice of the incumbent Joe Biden were made to dissuade people from voting for him. The person responsible for the calls was charged with voter suppression and impersonating a candidate. The FCC proposed to fine him US$6 million and Lingo Telecom, the company that allegedly relayed the calls, $2 million. Arup Group The firm Arup Group lost $25 million in 2024 from a deepfake scam.

Sara Duterte Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa on 14 June 2025 shared a 40-second Deepfake video created via Veo where two students on the street testified on why the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte is selective and politically motivated. Dela Rosa lauded the supposed youth for their opinions. When informed it was an AI video, he says that if that was the case the video creator had a point. Duterte herself defended Dela Rosa, insisting that sharing an AI video is not wrong as long as its "not for profit". Catherine Connolly In October 2025, Irish presidential candidate Catherine Connolly condemned an AI-generated deepfake video that mimicked an RTÉ News report and falsely claimed she was withdrawing from the presidential election; her campaign reported the video to the social media platforms it appeared on.

Sasse, Ben (19 October 2018). "This New Technology Could Send American Politics into a Tailspin". Opinions. The Washington Post. Retrieved 10 July 2019. Fake/Spoof Audio Detection Challenge (ASVspoof) Deepfake Detection Challenge (DFDC) Bibliography: Media Literacy in the Age of Deepfakes. Curated by Dr Joshua Glick. Before you believe – how to recognize a deepfake and is it inherently evil? Tyagi, Vipin (2026). Digital Image Forgery Detection: Techniques, Challenges and Applications.

SpringerBriefs in Computer Science.

Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.

Fake news is false or misleading information (misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and hoaxes) claiming the aesthetics and legitimacy of news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. Although false news has always been spread throughout history, the term fake news was first used in the 1890s when sensational reports in newspapers were common. Nevertheless, the term does not have a fixed definition and has been applied broadly to any type of false information presented as news. It has also been used by high-profile people to apply to any news unfavorable to them. Further, disinformation involves spreading false information with harmful intent and is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections. In some definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text. Because of this diversity of types of false news, researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term. It can spread through fake news websites. The prevalence of fake news has increased with the recent rise of social media, especially the Facebook News Feed, and this misinformation is gradually seeping into the mainstream media. Several factors have been implicated in the spread of fake news, such as political polarization, post-truth politics, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and social media algorithms. Fake news can reduce the impact of real news by competing with it. For example, a BuzzFeed News analysis found that the top fake news stories about the 2016 U.S. presidential election received more engagement on Facebook than top stories from major media outlets. It also particularly has the potential to undermine trust in serious media coverage. The term has at times been used to cast doubt upon credible news, and U.S. president Donald Trump has been credited with popularizing the term by using it to describe any negative press coverage of himself. It has been increasingly criticized, due in part to Trump's misuse, with the British government deciding to avoid the term, as it is "poorly defined" and "conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference". Multiple strategies for fighting fake news are actively researched, for various types of fake news. Politicians in certain autocratic and democratic countries have demanded effective self-regulation and legally enforced regulation in varying forms, of social media and web search engines. On an individual scale, the ability to actively confront false narratives, as well as taking care when sharing information can reduce the prevalence of falsified information. However, it has been noted that this is vulnerable to the effects of confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases that can seriously distort reasoning, particularly in dysfunctional and polarised societies. Inoculation theory has been proposed as a method to render individuals resistant to undesirable narratives. Because new misinformation emerges frequently, researchers have stated that one solution to address this is to inoculate the population against accepting fake news in general (a process termed prebunking), instead of continually debunking the same repeated lies.

The term fake news gained importance with the electoral context in Western Europe and North America. It is determined by fraudulent content in news format and its velocity. According to Bounegru, Gray, Venturini and Mauri, a lie becomes fake news when it "is picked up by dozens of other blogs, retransmitted by hundreds of websites, cross-posted over thousands of social media accounts and read by hundreds of thousands". The evolving nature of online business models encourages the production of information that is "click-worthy" and independent of its accuracy. The nature of trust depends on the assumptions that non-institutional forms of communication are freer from power and more able to report information that mainstream media are perceived as unable or unwilling to reveal. Declines in confidence in much traditional media and expert knowledge have created fertile grounds for alternative, and often obscure sources of information to appear as authoritative and credible. This ultimately leaves users confused about basic facts.

Figure 2: Fake News concept. Ai technology, Deepfake deep learning, deceptive ... Fake news has become popular with various media outlets and platforms. Journalists have identified that platforms like Google or Meta profit from the distribution of fake news. Part of the reason behind the broad circulation of fake news online is that fake news websites can be profitable by monetizing them through online advertising. Researchers at Pew Research Center discovered that over 60% of Americans access news through social media compared to traditional newspaper and magazines. With the popularity of social media, individuals can easily access fake news and disinformation. The rapid spread of false stories on social media during the 2012 elections in Italy has been documented, as has diffusion of false stories on Facebook during the 2016 US election campaign. Fake news has the tendency to become viral among the public. With the presence of social media platforms like Twitter, it becomes easier for false information to diffuse quickly. Research has found that false political information tends to spread three times faster than other false news. On Twitter, false tweets have a much higher chance of being retweeted than truthful tweets. More so, it is humans who are responsible for disseminating false news and information as opposed to bots and click farms. The tendency for humans to spread false information has to do with human behavior; according to research, humans are attracted to events and information that are surprising and new, and, as a result, cause high arousal in the brain. Besides, motivated reasoning was found to play a role in the spread of fake news.

This ultimately leads humans to retweet or share false information, which are usually characterized with clickbait and eye-catching titles. This prevents people from stopping to verify the information. As a result, massive online communities form around a piece of false news without any prior fact-checking or verification of the veracity of the information. Of particular concern regarding viral spread of fake news is the role of super-spreaders. Brian Stelter, the anchor of Reliable Sources at CNN, has documented the systematic long-term two-way feedback that developed between President Donald Trump and Fox News presenters. The resultant conditioning of outrage in their large audience against government and the mainstream media has proved a highly successful money-spinner for the TV network.

Fake news is often spread through the use of fake news websites, which, in order to gain credibility, specialize in creating attention-grabbing news, which often impersonate well-known news sources. Jestin Coler, who said he does it for "fun", has indicated that he earned US$10,000 per month from advertising on his fake news websites. Research has shown that fake news hurts social media and online based outlets far worse than traditional print and TV outlets. After a survey was conducted, it was found that 58% of people had less trust in social media news stories as opposed to 24% of people in mainstream media after learning about fake news. In 2019 Christine Michel Carter, a writer who has reported on Generation Alpha for Forbes stated that one-third of the generation can decipher false or misleading information in the media.

3. Software Implementation, Frameworks & Protocols satire or parody ("no intention to cause harm but has potential to fool") false connection ("when headlines, visuals or captions don't support the content") misleading content ("misleading use of information to frame an issue or an individual") false context ("when genuine content is shared with false contextual information") impostor content ("when genuine sources are impersonated" with false, made-up sources) manipulated content ("when genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive", as with a "doctored" photo) fabricated content ("new content is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm") Scientific denialism is another potential explanatory type of fake news, defined as the act of producing false or misleading facts to unconsciously support strong pre-existing beliefs.

Mis-information (misinformation): false information disseminated without harmful intent. Dis-information (disinformation): false information created and shared by people with harmful intent. Mal-information (malinformation): the sharing of "genuine" information with the intent to cause harm. Disinformation attacks are the most insidious type because of the harmful intent. For example, it is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections. Because of the manner in which former president Donald Trump has co-opted the term, The Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan has warned fellow journalists that "It's time to retire the tainted term 'fake news'. Though the term hasn't been around long, its meaning already is lost." By late 2018, the term "fake news" had become verboten and U.S. journalists, including the Poynter Institute were asking for apologies and for product retirements from companies using the term. In October 2018, the British government decided that the term fake news will no longer be used in official documents because it is "a poorly defined and misleading term that conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference in democratic processes." This followed a recommendation by the House of Commons' Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee to avoid the term. Researchers have also stated that the narrative of 'fake news' frames the media as a part of the problem rather than the solution. The stereotypes created by those who have manufactured misleading information threaten the integrity of journalists who work to uphold the utmost standards of accuracy. Many encourage discarding the term altogether, as the British government did. Clearer terms such as 'misinformation' are more useful in helping the public navigate the vast realm of information available thanks to search engines and social media. However, recent reviews of fake news still regard it as a useful broad construct, equivalent in meaning to fabricated news, as separate from related types of problematic news content, such as hyperpartisan news, the latter being a particular source of political polarization. Therefore, researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term. For example, the Commission of Inquiry by the Aspen Institute (2021) has adopted the term Information Disorder in its investigative report.

According to an academic library guide, a number of specific aspects of fake news may help to identify it and thus avoid being unduly influenced. These include: clickbait, propaganda, satire/parody, sloppy journalism, misleading headings, manipulation, rumor mill, misinformation, media bias, audience bias, and content farms. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) published a summary in diagram form (pictured at right) to assist people in recognizing fake news. Its main points are: Consider the source (to understand its mission and purpose) Read beyond the headline (to understand the whole story) Check the authors (to see if they are real and credible) Assess the supporting sources (to ensure they support the claims) Check the date of publication (to see if the story is relevant and up to date) Ask if it is a joke (to determine if it is meant to be satire) Review your own biases (to see if they are affecting your judgment) Ask experts (to get confirmation from independent people with knowledge). The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), launched by the Poynter Institute in 2015, supports international collaborative efforts in fact-checking, provides training, and has published a code of principles. In 2017 it introduced an application and vetting process for journalistic organisations. One of IFCN's verified signatories, the independent, not-for-profit media journal The Conversation, created a short animation explaining its fact checking process, which involves "extra checks and balances, including blind peer review by a second academic expert, additional scrutiny and editorial oversight". Beginning in the 2017 school year, children in Taiwan study a new curriculum designed to teach critical reading of propaganda and the evaluation of sources. Called "media literacy", the course provides training in journalism in the new information society.

Figure 3: From Misinformation to Insight: Machine Learning Strategies for Fake ... In the 13th century BC, Ramesses the Great spread lies and propaganda portraying the Battle of Kadesh as a stunning victory for the Egyptians; he depicted scenes of himself smiting his foes during the battle on the walls of nearly all his temples. The treaty between the Egyptians and the Hittites, however, reveals that the battle was actually a stalemate. During the first century BC, Octavian ran a campaign of misinformation against his rival Mark Antony, portraying him as a drunkard, a womanizer, and a mere puppet of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII. He published a document purporting to be Mark Antony's will, which claimed that Mark Antony, upon his death, wished to be entombed in the mausoleum of the Ptolemaic pharaohs.

Although the document may have been forged, it invoked outrage from the Roman populace. Mark Antony ultimately killed himself after his defeat in the Battle of Actium upon hearing false rumors propagated by Cleopatra herself claiming that she had committed suicide. During the second and third centuries AD, false rumors were spread about Christians claiming that they engaged in ritual cannibalism and incest. In the late third century AD, the Christian apologist Lactantius invented and exaggerated stories about pagans engaging in acts of immorality and cruelty, while the anti-Christian writer Porphyry invented similar stories about Christians.

From 1800 to 1810, James Cheetham made use of fictional stories to advocate politically against Aaron Burr. His stories were often defamatory and he was frequently sued for libel. One instance of fake news was the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. The Sun newspaper of New York published articles about a real-life astronomer and a made-up colleague who, according to the hoax, had observed bizarre life on the Moon. The fictionalized articles successfully attracted new subscribers, and the penny paper suffered very little backlash after it admitted the next month that the series had been a hoax. Such stories were intended to entertain readers and not to mislead them. Yellow journalism peaked in the mid-1890s characterizing the sensationalist journalism that arose in the circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. Pulitzer and other yellow journalism publishers goaded the United States into the Spanish–American War, which was precipitated when the USS Maine exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. The term fake news itself was apparently first used in the 1890s during this era of sensationalist news reporting.

4. Practical Deployment, Analysis & Case Studies During the First World War, an example of fake news was the anti-German atrocity propaganda regarding an alleged "German Corpse Factory" in which the German battlefield dead were supposedly rendered down for fats used to make nitroglycerine, candles, lubricants, human soap and boot dubbing. Unfounded rumors regarding such a factory circulated in the Allied press starting in 1915, and by 1917 the English-language publication North China Daily News presented these allegations as true at a time when Britain was trying to convince China to join the Allied war effort; this was based on new, allegedly true stories from The Times and the Daily Mail that turned out to be forgeries. These false allegations became known as such after the war, and in the Second World War Joseph Goebbels used the story in order to deny the ongoing massacre of Jews as British propaganda. According to Joachim Neander and Randal Marlin, the story also "encouraged later disbelief" when reports about the Holocaust surfaced after the liberation of Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps. After Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany in 1933, they established the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under the control of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis used both print and broadcast journalism to promote their agendas, either by obtaining ownership of those media or exerting political influence. The expression big lie (German: große Lüge) was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf. Throughout World War II, both the Axis and the Allies employed fake news in the form of propaganda to persuade the public at home and in enemy countries. The British Political Warfare Executive used radio broadcasts and distributed leaflets to discourage German troops. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace claimed that The New York Times printed fake news "depicting Russia as a socialist paradise". During 1932–1933, The New York Times published numerous articles by its Moscow bureau chief, Walter Duranty, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of reports about the Soviet Union.

In the 21st century, both the impact of fake news and the use of the term became widespread. The increasing openness, access and prevalence of the Internet resulted in its growth. New information and stories are published constantly and at a faster rate than ever, often lacking in verification, which may be consumed by anyone with an Internet connection. Fake news has grown from being sent via emails to attacking social media. Besides referring to made-up stories designed to deceive readers into clicking on links, maximizing traffic and profit, the term has also referred to satirical news, whose purpose is not to mislead but rather to inform viewers and share humorous commentary about real news and the mainstream media. United States examples of satire include the newspaper The Onion, Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, and the television shows The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. 21st-century fake news is often intended to increase the financial profits of the news outlet. In an interview with NPR, Jestin Coler, former CEO of the fake media conglomerate Disinfomedia, told who writes fake news articles, who funds these articles, and why fake news creators create and distribute false information. Coler, who has since left his role as a fake news creator, said that his company employed 20 to 25 writers at a time and made $10,000 to $30,000 monthly from advertisements. Coler began his career in journalism as a magazine salesman before working as a freelance writer. He said he entered the fake news industry to prove to himself and others just how rapidly fake news can spread. Disinfomedia is not the only outlet responsible for the distribution of fake news; Facebook users play a major role in feeding into fake news stories by making sensationalized stories "trend", according to BuzzFeed media editor Craig Silverman, and the individuals behind Google AdSense basically fund fake news websites and their content. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said, "I think the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way, I think is a pretty crazy idea" and then a few days later he blogged that Facebook was looking for ways to flag fake news stories. Many online pro-Trump fake news stories have been sourced out of Veles, Macedonia, where approximately seven different fake news organizations employ hundreds of teenagers to rapidly produce and plagiarize sensationalist stories for different U.S.

based companies and parties. Kim LaCapria of the fact checking website Snopes.com has stated that, in America, fake news is a bipartisan phenomenon, saying that "[t]here has always been a sincerely held yet erroneous belief misinformation is more red than blue in America, and that has never been true." Jeff Green of Trade Desk agrees the phenomenon affects both sides. Green's company found that affluent and well-educated persons in their 40s and 50s are the primary consumers of fake news.

He told Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes that this audience tends to live in an "echo chamber" and that these are the people who vote. In 2014, the Russian Government used disinformation via networks such as RT to create a counter-narrative after Russian-backed Ukrainian rebels shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. In 2016, NATO claimed it had seen a significant rise in Russian propaganda and fake news stories since the invasion of Crimea in 2014. Fake news stories originating from Russian government officials were also circulated internationally by Reuters news agency and published in the most popular news websites in the United States. A 2018 study at Oxford University found that Trump's supporters consumed the "largest volume of 'junk news' on Facebook and Twitter": On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters consumes the largest volume of junk news, and junk news is the largest proportion of news links they share," the researchers concluded. On Facebook, the skew was even greater. There, "extreme hard right pages—distinct from Republican pages—share more junk news than all the other audiences put together. In 2018, researchers from Princeton University, Dartmouth College and the University of Exeter examined the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Their findings showed that Trump supporters and older Americans (over 60) were far more likely to consume fake news than Clinton supporters. Those most likely to visit fake news websites were the 10% of Americans who consumed the most conservative information. There was a very large difference (800%) in the consumption of fake news stories as related to total news consumption between Trump supporters (6%) and Clinton supporters (1%). The study also showed that fake pro-Trump and fake pro-Clinton news stories were read by their supporters, but with a significant difference: Trump supporters consumed far more (40%) than Clinton supporters (15%). Facebook was by far the key "gateway" website where these fake stories were spread and which led people to then go to the fake news websites. Fact checks of fake news were rarely seen by consumers, with none of those who saw a fake news story being reached by a related fact check. Brendan Nyhan, one of the researchers, emphatically stated in an interview on NBC News: "People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites—full stop." NBC NEWS: "It feels like there's a connection between having an active portion of a party that's prone to seeking false stories and conspiracies and a president who has famously spread conspiracies and false claims. In many ways, demographically and ideologically, the president fits the profile of the fake news users that you're describing." NYHAN: "It's worrisome if fake news websites further weaken the norm against false and misleading information in our politics, which unfortunately has eroded. But it's also important to put the content provided by fake news websites in perspective. People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites—full stop." A 2019 study by researchers at Princeton and New York University found that a person's likelihood of sharing fake-news articles correlated more strongly with age than it did education, sex, or political views. 11% of users older than 65 shared an article consistent with the study's definition of fake news. Just 3% of users ages 18 to 29 did the same. Another issue in mainstream media is the usage of the filter bubble, a "bubble" that has been created that gives the viewer, on social media platforms, a specific piece of the information knowing they will like it. Thus creating fake news and biased news because only half the story is being shared, the portion the viewer liked. "In 1996, Nicolas Negroponte predicted a world where information technologies become increasingly customizable." In a study conducted by Ofcom from September 29 to November 28, 2025, and published on April 2, 2026, 56% of social media users stated that had seen misleading or false news in the last year.

Deepfakes (a portmanteau of deep learning and fake) are synthetic media (AI-generated media) in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness. Because a picture often has a greater impact than the corresponding words, deepfakes—which leverage powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate visual and audio content—have a particularly high potential to deceive. The main machine-learning methods used to create deepfakes are based on deep learning and involve training generative neural network architectures, such as autoencoders or generative adversarial networks (GANs). Deepfakes have garnered widespread attention for their uses in creating fake news (notably political), but also child sexual abuse material, celebrity pornographic videos, revenge porn, hoaxes, bullying, and financial fraud. This has elicited responses from both industry and government to detect and limit their use. Deepfakes generally require specialist software or knowledge, but much the same effect can be achieved quickly by anyone using standard video editing software on most modern computers. These videos (termed shallowfakes) have obvious flaws, but nevertheless can still be widely believed as real, or at least have entertainment value that reinforces beliefs. One of the first to go viral, "The Hillary Song", watched over 3 million times, shows Hillary Clinton being humiliated on stage by The Rock, a former wrestling champion. The surprised creator (who hates all politicians), pasted images of Clinton into a genuine video of The Rock humiliating a wrestling official.

In Internet slang, a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or off-topic discussion, often for the troll's amusement. Internet trolls also feed on attention. The idea of Internet trolls gained popularity in the 1990s, though its meaning shifted in 2011.

Whereas it once denoted provocation, it is a term now widely used to signify the abuse and misuse of the Internet. Trolling comes in various forms, and can be dissected into abuse trolling, entertainment trolling, classical trolling, flame trolling, anonymous trolling, and kudos trolling. It is closely linked to fake news, as Internet trolls are now largely interpreted as perpetrators of false information, information that can often be passed along unwittingly by reporters and the public alike.

When interacting with each other, trolls often share misleading information that contributes to the fake news circulated on sites like Twitter and Facebook. In the 2016 American election, Russia paid over 1,000 Internet trolls to circulate fake news and disinformation about Hillary Clinton; they also created social media accounts that resembled voters in important swing states, spreading influential political standpoints. In February 2019, Glenn Greenwald wrote that cybersecurity company New Knowledge "was caught just six weeks ago engaging in a massive scam to create fictitious Russian troll accounts on Facebook and Twitter in order to claim that the Kremlin was working to defeat Democratic Senate nominee Doug Jones in Alabama." 5. Performance Evaluation & Extended Technical Observations In a November 2016 interview with The Washington Post, Horner expressed regret for the role his fake news stories played in the election and surprise at how gullible people were in treating his stories as news. In February 2017 Horner said, I truly regret my comment that I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me. I know all I did was attack him and his supporters and got people not to vote for him. When I said that comment it was because I was confused how this evil man got elected President and I thought maybe instead of hurting his campaign, maybe I had helped it. My intention was to get his supporters NOT to vote for him and I know for a fact that I accomplished that goal. The far right, a lot of the Bible thumpers and alt-right were going to vote him regardless, but I know I swayed so many that were on the fence. In 2017, Horner stated that a fake story of his about a rape festival in India helped generate over $250,000 in donations to GiveIndia, a site that helps rape victims in India. Horner said he dislikes being grouped with people who write fake news solely to be misleading. "They just write it just to write fake news, like there's no purpose, there's no satire, there's nothing clever.

In 2006, French-speaking broadcaster RTBF showed a fictional breaking special news report that Belgium's Flemish Region had proclaimed independence. Staged footage of the royal family evacuating and the Belgian flag being lowered from a pole were made to add credence to the report. It was not until 30 minutes into the report that a sign stating "Fiction" appeared on screen. The RTBF journalist that created the hoax said the purpose was to demonstrate the magnitude of the country's situation and if a partition of Belgium was to really happen.

Fake news outlets in the Czech Republic redistribute news in Czech and English originally produced by Russian sources. Czech president Miloš Zeman has been supporting media outlets accused of spreading fake news. The Centre Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (CTHH) is unit of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic primarily aimed at countering disinformation, fake news, hoaxes and foreign propaganda. The CTHH started operations on January 1, 2017. The CTHH has been criticized by Czech President Miloš Zeman, who said: "We don't need censorship. We don't need thought police. We don't need a new agency for press and information as long as we want to live in a free and democratic society." In 2017 media activists started a website, Konspiratori.cz, maintaining a list of conspiracy and fake news outlets in Czech.

Neither the words 'fake' nor 'news' effectively capture this polluted information ecosystem. Much of the content used as examples in debates on this topic are not fake, they are genuine but used out of context or manipulated. Similarly, to understand the entire ecosystem of polluted information, we need to consider far more than content that mimics 'news'. In October 2020, a hoax claim made by a spoof Twitter account, about the supposed reopening of Woolworths stores, was repeated without verification by news sites including the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror (and the latter's regional sister titles).

Fake news during the 2016 U.S. election spread to China. Articles popularized within the United States were translated into Chinese and spread within China. The government of China used the growing problem of fake news as a rationale for increasing Internet censorship in China in November 2016. China then published an editorial in its Communist Party newspaper The Global Times called "Western media's crusade against Facebook", and criticized "unpredictable" political problems posed by freedoms enjoyed by users of Twitter, Google, and Facebook. China government leaders meeting in Wuzhen at the third World Internet Conference in November 2016 said fake news in the U.S. election justified adding more curbs to free and open use of the Internet. China Deputy Minister Ren Xianliang, official at the Cyberspace Administration of China, said increasing online participation led to "harmful information" and fraud. Kam Chow Wong, a former Hong Kong law enforcement official and criminal justice professor at Xavier University, praised attempts in the U.S. to patrol social media. The Wall Street Journal noted China's themes of Internet censorship became more relevant at the World Internet Conference due to the outgrowth of fake news. The issue of fake news in the 2016 United States election gave the Chinese Government a reason to further criticize Western democracy and press freedom. The Chinese government accused Western media organisations of bias, in a move apparently inspired by Trump. In March 2017, the People's Daily, a newspaper run by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, denounced news coverage of the torture of Chinese lawyer and human rights advocate Xie Yang, claiming it to be fake news. The newspaper published a Twitter post declaring that "Foreign media reports that police tortured a detained lawyer is FAKE NEWS, fabricated to tarnish China's image". The state-owned Xinhua News Agency claimed that "the stories were essentially fake news". The Chinese government often accused Western news organizations of being biased and dishonest. The Chinese government also claimed that there were people who posed as journalists who spread negative information on social media in order to extort payment from their victims to stop doing so. David Bandurski of University of Hong Kong's China Media Project said that this issue continued to worsen.

During the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, the Chinese government has been accused for using fake news to spread misinformation regarding the protests. It includes describing protests as "riots", and "radicals" seeking independence for the city. Due to the online censorship in China, citizens inside mainland China could not read news reports from some media outlets. It was also found by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that misinformation was spread with fake accounts and advertisements by state-backed media. Large amount of accounts were suspended. Dot Dot News, a pro-Beijing online media located in Hong Kong, has been banned by Facebook for distributing fake news and hate speech.

Harvested Online Documentation & Reference Sources • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake%20news • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio%20deepfake