Junk news aggregator aims to restore trust in media and democracy

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Junk news aggregator

aims to restore trust

in media and democracy

Developed by the Oxford Internet Institute with EU funding, the junk news

aggregator ( JNA) interactively displays articles from unreliable sources as they

spread on Facebook. Researchers hope the tool will help tackle the growing

phenomenon of misinformation on social media.

Named Word of the Year by Collins in 2017, ‘fake news’ has

slowly moved away from sensationalist and populist discourse

to anchor itself in our everyday lives. Fake news, or some would

rather say junk news, is now everywhere, starting with our own

Facebook walls. They’ve grown more credible, too: Unless you’ve

been educated to second-guess every article spreading across

your network, and have the time to cross-source information,

the odds of getting caught up in the fake news frenzy have

never been so high.

Introducing the JNA

Luckily for all of us, a group of scientists at the University

of Oxford have taken an important step in the systematic

evaluation of news credibility on social media. Their JNA

was launched in the lead-up to the 2018 US midterm elec-

tions. It can track down junk news sources on Facebook and

aggregate them on a dedicated online portal, so that none

of us can get fooled again.

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