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Fake news, media manipulation, and health effects of 5G: a small-sample discourse-analytic case study of the Croatian news website Index.hr

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  • Gabrić, Petar

    (University of Cologne, Germany)

Abstract

This study investigated whether the Croatian news website Index.hr manipulates information on the health effects of 5G. We constructed one experimental corpus, containing all articles by Index.hr on health effects of 5G, and two control corpora, one with articles about health effects of 5G published by reliable media, and one with articles about science published by Index.hr. Compared to Index.hr science articles, Index.hr 5G articles were 288.14 times likelier to express the author’s opinion, 16.95 times likelier to express a subjective opinion, 10.78 times likelier to contain no references, 10.78 times likelier to contain misinformation, and 4.20 times likelier to contain no scientific references. The simultaneous increase in misinformation and reduction in referencing suggeststhat the misinformation doesn’t stem from other sources, but that itis produced within Index.hr. An increase in opinion expression, and opinion subjectivity in the context of misinformation suggests that Index.hr is manipulating the information on health effects of 5G. Furthermore, all articles were written by different authors, indicating that this phenomenon is systematic within Index.hr. Still, the small sample size warrants a degree of caution.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabrić, Petar, 2020. "Fake news, media manipulation, and health effects of 5G: a small-sample discourse-analytic case study of the Croatian news website Index.hr," SocArXiv dpjbf_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:dpjbf_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/dpjbf_v1
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