Abstract
Agenda-setting theory holds that news media can shape what its audiences think about, and that certain vulnerable communities are more exposed than the rest of society. There is growing evidence that the same, unequal agenda-setting power applies to so-called fake news, but relatively little is known about the work being done to combat these harms. This chapter reviews literature examining the impact of mis-, dis- and mal-information on different user groups and sets it against analysis of educational media literacy projects in the UK. We argue that these vulnerable communities most at risk of the agenda-setting power of ‘fake news’ struggle to access meaningful information to help them navigate the online world. This is in part due to a fragmented and poorly funded media literacy sector.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Brites, M. J., & Pinto, M. (2017). Is there a role for the news industry in improving news literacy? Media Education Research Journal, 7 (2), 29–47. Retrieved January 7, 2022, from http://merj.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MERJ_7.2_pages-Editorial.pdf
Buckingham, D. (2019, March 21). What price ‘news literacy’? Media Education Blog. Retrieved January 7, 2022, from https://davidbuckingham.net/2019/03/21/what-price-news-literacy/
Cairncross, F. (2019). The Cairncross review: A sustainable future for journalism. Retrieved January 7, 2022, from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/779882/021919_DCMS_Cairncross_Review_.pdf
Cohen, B. C. (1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton University Press.
Craft, S., Ashley, S., & Maksl, A. (2017). News media literacy and conspiracy theory endorsement. Communication and the Public., 2(4), 388–401. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047317725539
Curtis, P. (2019, June 18). The great unnewsed struggle to participate fully in democracy. Financial Times. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://www.ft.com/content/060f152e-8ad7-11e9-a1c1-51bf8f989972
Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. (2021a). Online media literacy strategy. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1004233/DCMS_Media_Literacy_Report_Roll_Out_Accessible_PDF.pdf
Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. (2021b). Online safety—media literacy strategy. Mapping Exercise and Literature Review—Phase 1 Report. Media Literacy Strategy—Mapping Exercise and Literature Review—Phase 1 Report. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from publishing.service.gov.uk
Department for Education. (2021). Schools, pupils and their characteristics. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics
Dodson, K., Mason, J., & Smith, R. (2021, October 13). Covid vaccine misinformation and narratives surrounding Black communities on social media. First Draft. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/covid-19-vaccine-misinformation-black-communities/
Fraillon, J., Ainley, J., Schulz, W., Friedman, T., & Gebhardt, E. (2014). Preparing for life in a digital age: The IEA international computer and information literacy study international report. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=ict_literacy
Giusti, S., & Piras, E. (2020). In search of paradigms: Disinformation, fake news and post-truth politics. In S. Giusti & E. Piras (Eds.), Democracy and fake news: Information and post-truth politics. Routledge.
Guo, L., & Vargo, C. (2020). “Fake news” and emerging online media ecosystem: An integrated intermedia agenda-setting analysis of the 2016 US presidential election. Communication Research, 47(2), 178–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650218777177
Hanif, F. (2018). State of media reporting on Islam and Muslims: Quarterly Report Oct–Dec 2018. Centre for Media Monitoring. Retrieved August 7, 2021, from https://cfmm.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/CfMM-Quarterly-Report-Oct-Dec-2018.pdf
Jaakkola, M. (2020). Journalists as media educators: Journalistic media education as inclusive boundary work. Journalism Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2020.1844040
Kennedy, P., & Prat, A. (2017). Information inequality. Centre for Economic Policy Research. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://voxeu.org/article/information-inequality
Loomba, S., de Figueiredo, A., Piatek, S. J., de Graaf, K., & Larson, H. J. (2021). Measuring the impact of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on vaccination intent in the UK and USA. Nature Human Behaviour, 5, 337–348. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01056-1
LSE Commission on Truth, Trust and Technology. (2018). Tackling the information crisis: A policy framework for media system resilience. London School of Economics. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/T3-Report-Tackling-the-Information-Crisis-v6.pdf
McCombs, M., & Funk, M. (2011). Shaping the agenda of local daily newspapers: A methodology merging the agenda setting and community structure perspectives. Mass Communication and Society, 14(6), 905–919.
McCombs, M., & Shaw, D. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187.
National Literacy Trust. (2018a). Fake news and critical literacy: The final report of the Commission on Fake News and the Teaching of Critical Literacy in Schools. Retrieved November 7, 2021, from https://cdn.literacytrust.org.uk/media/documents/Fake_news_and_critical_literacy_-_final_report.pdf
National Literacy Trust. (2018b). News literacy network: Find the right fake news and critical literacy teaching resources. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://literacytrust.org.uk/policy-and-campaigns/all-party-parliamentary-group-literacy/fakenews/newsliteracy/
National Statistics. (2019). English indices of deprivation 2019. Retrieved February 3, 2022, from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019
NBC. (2021, October). Live: Facebook whistleblower testifies at senate hearing [online video]. NBC. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IhWeVHxdXg&t=2836s
Newman, N., Fletcher, R., Schulz, A., Andı, S., Robertson, C. T., & Nielsen, R. K. (2021). Reuters institute digital news report 2021, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2021-06/Digital_News_Report_2021_FINAL.pdf
Nielsen, R. K., Fletcher, R., Newman, N., Scott Brennan, J., & Howard, P. (2020). Navigating the ‘infodemic’: How people in six countries access and rate news and information about coronavirus. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/infodemic-how-people-six-countries-access-and-rate-news-and-information-about-coronavirus
Ofcom. (2021). Adults media use and attitudes report 2020/21. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from Adult’s Media Use and Attitudes report 2020/21 (ofcom.org.uk)
Ofcom. (n.d.). Making sense of media. Ofcom. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research
Office for National Statistics. (2021). Coronavirus and vaccine hesitancy, Great Britain: 9 August 2021. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandwellbeing/bulletins/coronavirusandvaccinehesitancygreatbritain/9august2021
Picton, I. (2019). Family news literacy. Retrieved January 7, 2022, from Family_news_literacy_report.pdf (literacytrust.org.uk)
Picton, I., Cappellini, C., & Hackett, S. (2020). NewsWise evaluation report 2019–2020. Retrieved January 7, 2022, from https://cdn.literacytrust.org.uk/media/documents/NewsWise_evaluation_report_2019-20_final.pdf (literacytrust.org.uk)
Picton, I., Teravainen-Goff, A., & Clark. C. (2021). NewsWise evaluation report 2020–2021. Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://cdn.literacytrust.org.uk/media/documents/NewsWise_evaluation_report_2020-21_final.pdf
Rubin, V. L. (2019). Disinformation and misinformation triangle: A conceptual model for “fake news” epidemic, causal factors and interventions. Journal of Documentation, 75(5), 1013–1034. Retrieved January 5, 2022, from https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-12-2018-0209/full/html
Shout Out UK. (2020). Misinformation and Covid-19 with the US embassy and the times. Shout Out UK. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://www.shoutoutuk.org/portfolio/misinformation-covid/
Spilsbury, M. (2021). Diversity in Journalism: An update on the characteristics of Journalists. National Council for the Training of Journalists. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.nctj.com/downloadlibrary/Diversity%20in%20journalism%202021.pdf
Tandoc, E. C., Jr., Lim, Z. W., & Ling, R. (2018). Defining “fake news”: A typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), 137–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143
Valencia, S. (2021, October 28). Misinformation online is bad in English. But it’s far worse in Spanish. Washington Post. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/10/28/misinformation-spanish-facebook-social-media
Van Prooijen, J. W. (2016). Why education predicts decreased belief in conspiracy theories. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 31 (1). Retrieved January 7, 2022, from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/acp.3301
Vargo, C. J., Guo, L., & Amazeen, M. A. (2018). The agenda-setting power of fake news: A big data analysis of the online media landscape from 2014 to 2016. New Media & Society, 20(5), 2028–2049. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817712086
Wallis, R., & Buckingham, D. (2019). Media literacy: The UK’s undead cultural policy. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 25(2), 188–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2016.1229314
Wardle, C. (2020, September 22). Understanding information disorder. First Draft. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/understanding-information-disorder/
World Association of News Publishers. (2021, July 22). WAN-IFRA announces 2021 European digital media awards winners. WAN-IFRA.org. Retrieved January 4, 2022, from https://wan-ifra.org/2021/07/2021-european-digital-media-awards-winners/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Yeoman, F., Morris, K. (2023). The Agenda-Setting Power of Fake News. In: Fowler-Watt, K., McDougall, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Media Misinformation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11976-7_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11976-7_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-11975-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-11976-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)