Fake news, clickbait och konkurrens : En kvantitativ studie om nyhetsorganisationers etiska samhällsansvar

Fake news has long been a part of the news landscape but has in recent times, as the market for online news has grown, become an increasingly occurring problem in contemporary news media and society. By analyzing the content published by the largest American news organizations this thesis provides an overview of the occurrence of fake news and clickbait on the competitive news market. Competition for the readers' limited attention has been known to create a thirst to be first and may lead to the consequences of unethical behavior by the organizations. But what does that mean? Fake news can be categorized as biased information which in turn can be divided into two parts, misinformation and disinformation. Disinformation is the intentional spread of wrong or biased information and in the scope of this thesis a news site’s intention is determined through its use of clickbait. This study also evaluates the fake news and clickbait present in the most popular news articles by readers in order to see if the competition is increasing the use of tools for competitive advantages within the market for news. With this information it is possible to categorize the news article as one of three stages of morality which in turn is used to evaluate to what degree the organization is fulfilling the ethical aspect of their corporate social responsibility. The study finds that all but one of the explored organizations are fulfilling their ethical responsibility