Research Question: Whether Social Media Audiences With Higher Media Literacy Ability are More Likely to Identify fake News

Abstract

Fake news is not a new thing, and with the development of the Internet and social media, the relation ship between fake news and audiences has become closer. The definition of fake news or false information is a fabricated content that imitates traditional news and serves to serve certain entities or personal interests [1].It can be divided into the following categories, including satire, mischief and propaganda. The purpose of the satire is not to mislead the audience, but users will mistake satirical articles for real news. Mischief is a fake news coverage designed to mislead people, usually for web traffi c, but without political motives[2]. Propaganda is the use of misinformation or misleading information for political purposes, and it may aff ect elections, intensify political disagreement and even violence. The development of social media has increased the possibility of dissemination of false information, and therefore can be used in extremely short exponential spread over time, which means that there will be a large number of users exposed to fake news, especially on social media with insufficient information control mechanism[3]. Therefore, the research question of this essay is whether social media audiences with higher media literacy ability are more likely to identify fake news.