We’ve got bad news!

Civil servants from Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) once decided to strengthen the parliament’s fence with an additional tool and ordered a “spiral safety barrier”. Ukrainian journalists dug that information up and created an ordinary item for daily newsfeed. The information was supposed to add some traffic and to entertain the readers a little bit. MPs, fence and barbed wire – the theme was potentially interesting.

There are many cases like these. Just take a look into your commuting fellow’s screen – what is she or he reading while riding a bus? There is a great chance that you’ll be terrified by the headlines of the news – a dense flow of manipulations, fakes, horrors and entertainment. Or, if you are strong enough mentally, try to have a conversation about politics with a taxi driver. In most of the cases you would hear a range of absolutely incredible statements which have little in common with the reality. Ask them – where did he or she got to know it from – the answer is simple like that: “I’ve read it from the Internet”. Objects of our investigation are Internet media that serve as news sources for the readers who do not care too much about the quality and the information’s proofs.

Who is in our scope?

During 2017 we’ve compiled a list of relatively little-known websites where we noticed anti-Ukrainian or pro-Russian propaganda. We have collected about 150 such websites – and it is not their full number, of course. These sites have become the subject of our thorough study. Some of them got closed during this year, some have changed their addresses. There are websites that duplicate each other.

Also we have excluded 36 websites from the original list - their level of manipulative news had been defined as “less than 25%” according to our algorithm. As a result we’ve got 80 websites which spread the manipulations online.

Nothing Personal – It’s Just Business

As some of the owners and PR specialists of such media state, the major mission of these websites is very simple – to make money by posting pre-paid materials to destroy somebody’s reputation. Or, as an option, they publish the accusations against some well-known and rich personalities and then take “news” away from their websites after being paid for this.

Such websites also generate information flow that brings traffic. And it is a mix of faked news, real news, slightly changed news and misinterpreted news as well as exotic recipes and celebrities’ tempting photos. There are the titles like “Streets are overloaded with dead bodies” used for the news item about poisoning of 6 dogs in Berdyansk.

The difference of such websites from classic “yellow press” i that there is no real editorial office with real correspondents who create original content, no real contacts are provided, and of course no standards are obeyed. As for the design – it is usually very simple one, often using the basic templates.

As we have already pointed, according to the information provided by our informants, these media earn from publishing and then removing pre-paid compromising materials. Victims of online blackmailing, occasionally googling their names, are supposed to get scared and to try to “clean up” such information. This method works well if the person accused is not very popular in Internet media – in this case all the negative news items hit the top lines of the search engine results.

A distinctive feature of such publications is a victim’s full name in the headlines, sometimes even with patronymic. SEO-optimizing specialists explain to “customers” that this way it would be googled better. In “normal” media headlines usually try to attract the attention with a victim’s work or family relations – for example, not “(little-known) Ivan Petrenko has got caught on a bribe”, but “Petro Kyrychenko’s (more famous one) father-or-mother-or-other-relative-in-law has got caught on a bribe!”

Compromising publications on such websites are targeting future “customers” who would come and offer money to move away the discrediting information. And this is the main source of their earnings.

While there are no such “clients” these websites imitate the work of “normal media” reposting various content with little or none modifications – sometimes this content is “normal” and sometimes not. They hunt for readers who would click the headline and increase the number of site’s visits. One visit is not an equivalent of a one person from the audience – please read here how the visits are being counted.

Unlike many top rated media, which though posting the pre-paid materials but rather positive or promotional ones, "junk websites" do not care about the quality of their content. It could be a completely faked story and a completely true one (with too little evidence to be published by “normal” media). Accusations could be based on rumors, Photoshop drawn “documents”, fake web-pages of foreign media or on Facebook posts, usually from the groups that have been created for these particular goals.

“The publisher” cannot be found or threatened – he and his servers are placed abroad. There is only a possibility to clean away discrediting information with a help of a special “negotiator”. But no one denies that it is a hook: if you pay once – you’ll be either paying regularly or will get the tones of discrediting materials in case of refusal. Still “experienced victims” of such informational attacks know: if a “client” does not succumb to blackmail, those “journalists-pirates” will ride away in search of new victims.

The price-list for such “deals” (there are few poetic names for them like “The Silent Promise” or “The Quiet Don Operation”) totally depends on how impudent the “website” is and on how strongly the “victim” of the publication is scared. As a rule the prices start from 1000 USD for a little-known site from the second dozen of Google results.

According to our informant, each customer who orders a trash campaign dreams big – that the news will make its way into the headlines of “normal” media or even more – on screens of top TV channels.

“One cannot just offer “smelly” topics to these sites directly”. But there are some other ways to do it – for example, faked accusation first gets published on a junk website, later it is posted by some “opinion leaders” on their Facebook pages.

The opinion leader can be a real one, famous or little-known, but also it can be a “bot” – a fictional person, who “all of a sudden” gets interested in a particular topic and becomes an “expert” in it. Thus a fake gets into the newsfeeds with references to “opinion leaders” and their social networks' pages. Very often such “news” is reposted by top ranking media due to laziness or inattention of the editor (night or weekend editor usually). “Another way to attract the readers of top ranking media and to make them read these faked news is to place a banner” – states our source.

“Opinion leader” who spreads faked or manipulative news from a junk website does not necessarily do it for money – he or she can be just not smart enough to recognize news and standards or to be truly indignant by the “news”. But in most of the cases Facebook “leaders” do know what they post and share.

“As in beauty industry or at FMCG market, where bloggers do not conceal that they take money for commercial posts, there are purchasable opinion leaders on the market of information wars as well” – our source says.

Such an “expert” can get paid only once or be paid regularly. He can repeat the information published by a low quality website thus providing some legitimacy for publishing the fake in a top ranking media newsfeed.

One can just call to some “newsrooms” and offer the materials for publishing. For example we called newsonline24.com.ua (21 000 visits per month in October 2018 according to SimilarWeb) and they had asked for just $65 for a faked news discrediting one of potential presidential candidates. However there are players who work only with well-tried PR agencies.

In some media an owner, an editor and a journalist is the same person. In others – an owner can have a number of such media. They do not generate their own content besides prepaid discrediting materials. In other cases they create content by multiple reposts – sometimes with original headlines, sometimes with rewritten “horrifying” ones.

These sites are not picky when they receive money for prepaid materials from “clients”. At some moment Russian propaganda can take advantage of such opportunities. We assume that these sites may accept large orders from PR agencies which in turn have contracts with Russian propagandists. But we have not caught anyone of them on spot. Instead we have been observing how junk websites repost Kremlin major theses.

How It Influences Media Field

We assume that a manipulative news business model exists because of the phenomenon which could be called “I’ve read it on the Internet”. What does it mean? Some readers see Internet as big, all-in-one mass media without differentiating various parts such as online platforms. These parts may vary by their mission, standards, values and reputation. But for many readers it does not matter where they have read this or that news on – Liga.net (real media with thorough fact-checking policy) or Skelet.info (junk website publishing trash). They believe in what they read if it affects them emotionally. However this hypothesis needs further research.

As it’s been already mentioned there is a number of ways to “legitimize” fakes and sometimes there are situations when unproved information from the very bottom of Ukrainian Internet gets into the news feeds of leading media.

All this together with political dependence of a large part of Ukrainian media and wide presence of Russian and pro-Russian Internet media make the informational space of Ukrainian Internet very susceptible to manipulations of public opinion.

According to IMI (Institute of Mass Information) research out of 50 most popular online media in Ukraine only about 20-25 do try to filter and fact-check their content in some way. But working in extremely polluted informational space causes even the most fastidious media to be at a higher risk of sharing false or manipulative news. And sometimes it happens. Nor should we exclude a deliberate work of Russian special services and propagandists when they launch their own messages into an informational space – both into the Internet in general and into leading media websites.

In a situation like this the mainstream media should lift up the “admission line” for the news to be published. The level to what it should be lifted taking into account the costs of labor and estimated profits – this is the subject of another discussion. What we can state right now is that the refusal to publish the quotes and comments of “political experts” or “opinion leaders” known for promoting prepaid theses will significantly refresh the whole informational atmosphere. “Ban” should also be applied for making news out of Facebook posts with exceptions for verified accounts only.

How to Counteract Manipulations: Brief Review of European Practices

In order to understand how to counteract or neutralize such informational influences we have looked at European experience. In most of the EU countries the state protects juridically the rights of specific individuals who have been directly targeted by the false information in media. There are also professional associations that monitor how standards and ethics in journalism are obeyed.

Two countries are implementing practices that could be interesting for Ukraine.

Spain. To detect and to counteract the disinformation is the function of National Cybersecurity Council. Spanish citizens changed the governmental branch responsible for fighting the hostilely intended disinformation – from a state regulatory agency to a security force department.

In summer 2018 lower house of Parliament of France adopted a law according to which a candidate participating in the election campaign has a right to go to law complaining about the media's manipulations with facts or information. If the court decides in favor of the plaintiff, the publication is to be removed immediately. And the trial itself in such cases should be completed within 48 hours. The critics of the law worried about the freedom of press. And during the debates in parliament there were doubts about its efficiency. The Senate passed the law from the second try. French journalists now actively discuss another initiative: a suggestion to introduce the certificates of true information. If professional community is able to work out and agree upon the standards of the document then whole media, including journalists and bloggers, would be able to receive and to place such certificates in their materials.

The Conclusion for Ukraine

The attempts of the state to regulate media in Ukraine can be very complicated. It is not always possible to find a real owner or an editor of the website. Also, and this is particularly the case in Ukrainian reality, state’s intervention could really be a threat to a freedom of speech.

State mechanisms of control in such a sensitive sphere as media can work efficiently only in the democratically developed societies with high level of trust to state institutions.

For example, when Malaysia and Egypt adopted their laws for fighting fake news the opposition parties in these countries and international human rights organizations had gone out on protests. They claimed it as an impudent censorship but not the laws to counteract fake information. In Malaysia the law had been canceled right after the new political force, more democratic one came into power.

French initiatives are being widely discussed in Ukraine now, but from our point of view we should rather study Spain’s experience more closely where the disinformation campaigns are detected by a state cyber security force, not a media regulator. When introducing such principles there should be special protective mechanisms provided to prevent the state agency from overusing its functions and turning into a censor. It is important for the organization counteracting disinformation campaigns to focus on the propaganda that threatens national security.

While developing the legislation on counteracting disinformation it is advisable to follow the rule “track where the money comes from” meaning that media should declare their source of financing.

But the development and implementation of any state policy takes a lot of time. And Ukraine is facing an election season that impedes decision making and policy implementation.

That is why the key role here should be played by civil initiatives and by journalists who do care about professional standards. At present the most efficient ways for Ukraine to defeat the detrimental effect of manipulative news are:

1. Outreach campaigns explaining which news and media deserve to be trusted and which do not. It needs to be explained how to distinguish a piece of news that contains manipulations.
2. Increasing the number of monitoring tools and organizations watching the journalistic standards being obeyed by all media.
3. Solidarity and self-organization of key media, development of general principles and standards which are doable and acceptable for Ukrainian reality. In our opinion an obligatory component of such standards should be a strict ban on making the news out of different statements and announcements made by all sorts of “political experts” and “opinion leaders” previously known for their “purchasable” opinions.

There are currently no associations that unite leading Ukrainian media.

If we want media to be free of state regulation, which could easily turn into censorship, then we have to take the responsibility of working out the standards and monitoring them by our professional community. Either these are journalists who control themselves or are controlled by state, or it is a situation of anarchy and a society without normal news. What we are actually observing nowadays.

How the Study Was Conducted: Methodology

Please find more details about the technical part of the work here.

At the beginning of our study we invited the editors who work with the news on a daily basis and with their help we defined and described the most common types of manipulative news: “A complete fake”, “A manipulative headline / clickbait”, “A conspiracy theory / Pseudoscience”, “Emotionally biased news”, “Wrong arguments”, “Political conspiracies”, “A normal text”.

Then we downloaded around 7 thousand news from junk websites and from well-known websites with good reputation. After that we marked each piece of news – either as “normal” or as “corresponding to one of the manipulative types”. We studied only the news about Ukraine, omitting the themes of entertainment, sports, celebrities etc.

After that we trained the deep learning algorithm to define the types of manipulations in the news on the basis of previously classified news. While conducting our work we’ve found out that the most common types of manipulations are “emotional bias” and “wrong arguments”. Thus they were used to train the algorithm to “catch” the manipulations.

Please find the description of each category here.

We took the entire news flow from selected websites starting from December 2017 till October 2018 and calculated the percentage of manipulative news on each of them.

We did not do the fact checking of the news – that means that we looked not for fakes, but precisely for manipulations. Pure fakes (lies) in the news we marked as the “wrong arguments” type of manipulations. While marking the news “by hand” we have noticed that complete fakes are not very common.

We’ve ignored images and video for technical reason - though they could manipulate as well. We have not managed to train the machine to comprehend the text just as good as experts do. Algorithm discerned 60% of emotionally biased news in Russian and 40% of such news in Ukrainian. It discerned 55% of “wrong arguments” news in Russian and 30% of them in Ukrainian. While defining the manipulative news out of normal ones the algorithm was wrong in less than 8% of the cases. On big massive of data such percentage of errors allows to make a relative ranking of websites.

After classifier predicted manipulations in each piece of news, we summed up the results by calculating the percentage of manipulative news for each website.