COMBATING DISINFORMATION : Detecting fake news with linguistic models and classification algorithms

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine the possibility of accurately distinguishing fabricated news from authentic news stories using Naive Bayes classification algorithms. This involves a comparative study of two different machine learning classification algorithms. The work also contains an overview of how linguistic text analytics can be utilized in detection purposes and an attempt to extract interesting information was made using Word Frequencies. A discussion of how different actors and parties in businesses and governments are affected by and how they handle deception caused by fake news articles was also made. This study further tries to ascertain what collective steps could be made towards introducing a functioning solution to combat fake news. The result swere inconclusive and the simple Naive Bayes algorithms used did not yieldfully satisfactory results. Word frequencies alone did not give enough information for detection. They were however found to be potentially useful as part of a larger set of algorithms and strategies as part of a solution to handling of misinformation.