Proliferation of fake news and hate speech and alternative solutions

Abstract

The study ‘Proliferation and alternative solutions to fake news and hate speech’ is aimed at investigating behaviors, perspectives, responsiveness of the youth towards the two aforementioned online pollutions. It also tries to discover severity and ways to solve the problems. Applying survey research, interview and content analysis, it found that most of survey research respondents (62.1 %) use mobile phones as means of being online, 6 hours per day on average. The main reason for using the internet is for entertainment (32.9 %); Facebook is the most frequently visited social media.

The most commonly platforms where these respondents see fake news and hate speech are Line (29.6 %) and Facebook (28.9 %) as often as once a day (33.5 %). They view themselves on high capabilities (46.5 %) in identifying fake news and hate speech. The most critical issues are those bringing damage to victims financially, physically and mentally. However, respondents admit that they do nothing when see the two problems online; only 2 percent notify operators and relevant authorities. Financial hoax is identified as the most critical among all types of fake news and content in relation to Ideologies and belief is top rated among a wide varieties of hate speech.

Analyzing online content derived from research sampling sites, it found that clickbait is the most proliferated of all types of fake news while ideologies and belief content is ranked number one among hate speech found.

Solutions to cope with fake news and hate speech are to utilize the strength of the local community, mobilize support from the public, enhance media literacy to people, launch a national campaign to tackle the issues, and impose laws against those who are behind the spread of these online poisons. Media restrictions and controls should be the last resort as this is not in line with freedom of expression in a democratic society.