Vetting and verifying multimodal false information. A challenge for democratic societies

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of fake news is a challenge for free societies, founded on freedom of expression and information, endangering their democratic systems through audience confusion. Fake news is a type of disinformation with the ability to alter the logical orientation of readers, and as evidenced in different academic publications, it can radicalize the citizen and favour violence. This news is also created to confuse audiences and reinforce certain trends. This is important enough to produce a scientific interest in information science studies and urge the creation of tools capable of detecting and identifying this type of news, especially those disseminated by social networks, where a personal relationship is maintained with the group. In these close and friendly social spaces, users experience more induced forgetfulness than when interacting with strange social groups, that is, the convergence of memory is more likely to occur within the same group. There is a danger that false news and collective false memories could become the price of defending freedom of expression. The increase in misinformation can alter individual and collective memories in a worrying way. Understanding how and why false memories form could offer some protection the next time a massacre that never took