Fake News

Fabricated information mimicking news media, referred to as “fake news”, is an epidemic deception technique to manipulate public opinion. Older adults, and especially those with lower cognitive functioning, are particularly vulnerable to deception via fake news. Currently only technical solutions exist (e.g. fact checking), but fake news continues to break through, leaving human decision making as the last line of defense. A FINS research team, which includes psychology professors, are working on developing a neural network model to identify deceptive features in news headlines and cognitive characteristics in the decision maker toward enhancing fake news detection.