Fake news is deliberately false and evolved from clickbait to political manipulation

Evidence

We have had a lot to say so far about the history of fake news, but we still have not defined it. What is fake news? Fake news is not simply news that is false; it is deliberately false. It has been created for a purpose. At the beginning of the 2016 election season, perhaps that purpose was “clickbait.” They wanted you to click on a provocative headline so that you would add a few cents to their coffers, in much the same way that the National Enquirer entices you to slip it into your grocery cart with headlines such as “Hillary: Six Months to Live!” But then the darkness descended. Some of the creators of “fake news” began to notice that the favorable stories about Trump were getting many more clicks than the favorable ones about Hillary—and that the negative stories about Hillary were getting the most clicks of all. So guess which ones they doubled down on? In this environment, fake news evolved from clickbait to disinformation. It morphed from a vehicle for financial gain to one for political manipulation. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 213

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives a crisp working definition distinguishing fake news (deliberately false) from mere falsehood, and traces its 2016 shift from profit to politics.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in disinformation mechanics and how market incentives precede political instrumentalization, paralleling the Milgrom law-merchant material on incentive structures driving behavior. — connects to: The ‘fake news’ charge asserts press bias rather than literal fabrication of stories — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 131; Only four percent of people can reliably identify fake news headlines — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 43; Misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda differ mainly by intent to deceive — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 53 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Fake news transitions from a profit motive to political weaponization #corroborates (0.95) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 213
• Political impact of fake news is independent of its creators’ actual motives #expands (0.80) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 217