Special Issue “Fighting Fake News: A Generational Approach'

To reach a state of equal opportunity in our society, access to credible, accessible information [1,2] across all generations is of the utmost importance. Access to (digital) information about services and products is crucial [3]. Van den Hoven [4], referring to Rawls [5,6], goes so far as to refer to accessible information as a “primary good”. As all citizens have an equal right to information, Bovens [7], Bovens and Loos[8] even advocate granting citizens’ information rights, following along the lines of the classic (freedom) rights. We define fake news as “any kind of misleading information that could mistakenly be considered accurate, regardless of the mechanisms that led to its propagation” [9]. See [10] for a typology of scholarly definitions and [11] for a discussion of related terms, such as mis-, dis- and mal-information. Fake news endangers the accessibility of information for younger and older citizens [12–14]. The question we are confronted with now is how to fight fake news so that all generations can continue to have access to credible, accessible information. It is not only important to investigate the feasibility of interventions at an early age to empower young citizens such that they are able to establish the trustworthiness of news. It is also essential to involve other generations as due to the paucity of studies in this field, it would be naive to assume that they are not vulnerable to fake news” [9]. (…) This Special Issue of Societies comprises seven papers that present empirical research in Bosnia and Herzegiovina (1x) [19], one multiple-country study (Argentine, Australia, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, USA, Qatar, New Zealand and Costa Rica) [20], the USA (3×) [21–23], Romania (2×) [24,25], focusing on how different generations perceive fake news, including young and middle-aged groups of people [19], multiple age groups [22,25], university students and adults in general [20], elementary students (grades 1–5 in USA [21], children and adolescents [24], and ...