Local Perceptions and Practices of News Sharing and Fake News

Abstract

Fake news is a prevalent problem, particularly in digital media, that undermines trust and cooperation among people. As a variety of global mitigation efforts arise, the understanding of how people consider fake news becomes important, especially in local contexts. To that end, we carried out a survey with 75 participants in Singapore to understand people's perceptions of and practices with news (real and fake). Locally, fake news was found to be more pervasive in instant messaging apps than in social media, with the problem attributed more strongly to sharing than to creation. Good news sharing practices were generally observed. Highest trust was reported in government communication platforms across 11 media items. These results show that Singapore possesses a peculiar sociocultural scene, suggesting that efforts directed towards locally relevant measures may be more effective in addressing fake news in Singapore. We detail the survey results and recommended directions in this paper.