Skip to main content

Ethical Considerations in Data-Driven Fake News Detection

Part of the The Information Retrieval Series book series (INRE,volume 42)

Abstract

Data-driven and AI-based detection of fake news has seen much recent interest. The focus of research on data-driven fake news detection has been on developing novel and effective machine learning pipelines. The field has flourished with the rapid advances in deep learning methodologies and the availability of several labelled datasets to benchmark methods. While treating fake news detection as yet another data analytics problem, there has been little work on analyzing the ethical and normative considerations within such a task. This work, in a first-of-its-kind effort, analyzes ethical and normative considerations in using data-driven automation for fake news detection. We first consider the ethical dimensions of importance within the task context, followed by a detailed discussion on adhering to fairness and democratic values while combating fake news through data-driven AI-based automation. Throughout this chapter, we place emphasis on acknowledging the nuances of the digital media domain and also attempt to outline technologically grounded recommendations on how fake news detection algorithms could evolve while preserving and deepening democratic values within society.

Keywords

  • Ethics
  • Fairness
  • Fake news detection
  • Data science

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-62696-9_10
  • Chapter length: 28 pages
  • Instant PDF download
  • Readable on all devices
  • Own it forever
  • Exclusive offer for individuals only
  • Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout
eBook
USD   139.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • ISBN: 978-3-030-62696-9
  • Instant PDF download
  • Readable on all devices
  • Own it forever
  • Exclusive offer for individuals only
  • Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout
Softcover Book
USD   179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
Hardcover Book
USD   179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Arrieta, A.B., Díaz-Rodríguez, N., Del Ser, J., Bennetot, A., Tabik, S., Barbado, A., García, S., Gil-López, S., Molina, D., Benjamins, R., et al.: Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI): concepts, taxonomies, opportunities and challenges toward responsible AI. Inf. Fus. 58, 82–115 (2020)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  2. Bernardin, H.J., Beatty, R.W., Jensen Jr., W.: The new uniform guidelines on employee selection procedures in the context of university personnel decisions. Person. Psychol. 33(2), 301–316 (1980)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  3. Binns, R.: On the apparent conflict between individual and group fairness. In: Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, pp. 514–524 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Buning, M.D.C., et al.: A multidimensional approach to disinformation. EU Expert Group Reports (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Dwork, C., Hardt, M., Pitassi, T., Reingold, O., Zemel, R.: Fairness through awareness. In: Proceedings of the 3rd Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference, pp. 214–226 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Freyenhagen, F.: Taking reasonable pluralism seriously: an internal critique of political liberalism. Polit. Philos. Econ. 10(3), 323–342 (2011)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  7. Gangireddy, S.C.R., Long, C., Chakraborty, T.: Unsupervised fake news detection: a graph-based approach. In: Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, pp. 75–83 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Hashemi, M., Hall, M.: Criminal tendency detection from facial images and the gender bias effect. J. Big Data 7(1), 1–16 (2020)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  9. Hassan, N., Zhang, G., Arslan, F., Caraballo, J., Jimenez, D., Gawsane, S., Hasan, S., Joseph, M., Kulkarni, A., Nayak, A.K., et al.: Claimbuster: the first-ever end-to-end fact-checking system. Proc. VLDB Endowm. 10(12), 1945–1948 (2017)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  10. Hopp, T., Ferrucci, P., Vargo, C.J.: Why do people share ideologically extreme, false, and misleading content on social media? A self-report and trace data-based analysis of countermedia content dissemination on Facebook and twitter. In: Human Communication Research (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Hube, C., Fetahu, B., Gadiraju, U.: Understanding and mitigating worker biases in the crowdsourced collection of subjective judgments. In: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–12 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Huff, M.: Joint declaration on freedom of expression and “fake news,” disinformation, and propaganda. Secrecy Soc. 1(2), 7 (2018)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  13. Hysolli, E.: The story of the human body: Evolution, health, and disease. Yale J. Biol. Med. 87(2), 223 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Lloyd, E., Wilson, D.S., Sober, E.: Evolutionary mismatch and what to do about it: a basic tutorial. Evolut. Appl. 2–4 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Narayanan, A.: How to Recognize AI Snake Oil. Arthur Miller Lecture on Science and Ethics. MIT, Cambridge (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  16. O’neil, C.: Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Broadway Books, New York (2016)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Rawls, J.: A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1971)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Roets, A., et al.: ‘Fake News’: incorrect, but hard to correct. The role of cognitive ability on the impact of false information on social impressions. Intelligence 65, 107–110 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Smart, J.J.C., Williams, B.: Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1973)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  20. Thurman, N.: Personalization of news. Int. Encycl. Journal. Stud. 2019, 1–6 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Whittlestone, J., Nyrup, R., Alexandrova, A., Dihal, K., Cave, S.: Ethical and Societal Implications of Algorithms, Data, and Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for Research. Nuffield Foundation, London (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Yin, X., Han, J., Philip, S.Y.: Truth discovery with multiple conflicting information providers on the web. IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. 20(6), 796–808 (2008)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

P, D. (2021). Ethical Considerations in Data-Driven Fake News Detection. In: Data Science for Fake News. The Information Retrieval Series, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62696-9_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62696-9_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-62695-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-62696-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)