A conference Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action was held on February 17–18, 2017. David Lazer, Nir Grinberg, Lisa Friedland, Kenneth Joseph and Will Hobbs, all of Northeastern University and Harvard University, Matthew Baum, of Harvard University and Carolina Mattsson, of Northeastern University (not in original order) wrote a final report drawing from the conference presentations.

Fake news benefits from the fast pace that information travels in today’s media ecosystem, especially across social media platforms, but it is possible to reduce fake news. For example, users should be informed that particular news may be fake and they should also be provided with ideologically compatible sources that confirm that particular news is fake.

The research community should involve more conservatives in the discussion of misinformation in politics, collaborate more closely with journalists and develope multidisciplinary community-wide shared resources for conducting academic research on the presence and dissemination of misinformation on social media platforms, the authors state.

The report is freely available online.

Picture: Misinformation by 3dpete, licence: CC BY-ND 2.0