The problem of "Fake News". What are the challenges to Internet regulation?

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics, Politic Communications, , language: English, abstract: The purpose of this paper is to take a closer look at the problem of fake news and to evaluate if regulations of any kind could have a positive impact. The two following questions will be front and center: What are the primary challenges to Internet regulation in general and fake news in particular? What are possible paths to resolutions to those challenges? In order to analyze those questions, this paper will first address the consumption of news online and the role social media in particular. In a second step, the subject of "fake news" will be introduced. It will also take a look at the theoretical background and problems when it comes to regulations of online content. Then, those problems and possible solutions will be discussed in connection to the chosen example of fake news. Lastly, the results will be summarized and a conclusion will be drawn. Overall, it should be noted that the challenges described in this paper relate exclusively to political news and cannot be generalized across all subcategories of news. The discussion will focus primarily on the United States. This can mainly be justified due to their political and economic dominance on the world stage. Furthermore, major Internet companies, for instance Facebook, Twitter and Google, are all based in the United States. Finally, the recent presidential election has provoked an international debate and offers a great basis for further analysis. Events during the past decade have demonstrated that social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, are changing the way individuals consume and share news. News stories can be distributed across borders and discussed by people around the world within minutes. One example includes news of the protests in the Middle East that spread through the social media networks Twitter and Facebook. Situations like this demonstrated how posted stories, photos and videos could immediately attract world-wide attention and how social media platforms can support news production and diffusion. Indeed, the spread of news on social media has become a phenomenon of increasing social, economic and political magnitude. Recently though, the proliferation of fake news on social media has been subject of an intensive international discussion.