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A high-speed world with fake news: brand managers take warning

Mark Peterson Department of Management and Marketing, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA

Abstract Purpose – In an increasingly dangerous era for brands because of the emergence of fake news on the internet, brand managers need to know what is happening with fake news. This study aims to present perspectives on how to cope in an era of fake news. Design/methodology/approach – The author provides a general review of fake news and what its sudden rise means for brand managers. Findings – The study highlights the importance of context for news and the role of institutions, such as businesses and governments. The study calls brand managers to slow down in the high-speed world of the infosphere to preserve the integrity of their brands. Research limitations/implications – The study is limited by its time frame as the internet continues to evolve. However, for times when fake news presents a threat to brands and other institutions, the study is relevant. Practical implications – Brand managers need to slow down their activity levels just as savvy readers need to slow down their own reading on the internet. By doing this, brand managers will be better able to defend their brands in an era characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). Social implications – The study suggests that resistance to fake news and its pernicious effects can be improved by taking an approach to processing content on the internet characterized by the scientific method. In this way, a context for news can be derived and fake news can be identified. In this way, societal trust can be improved. Originality/value – This study is original because it analyzes the implications of fake news for brand managers and presents the most workable steps for identifying fake news.

Keywords VUCA, Technology, Brand management, Fake news, Disinformation, News literacy

Paper type Conceptual paper

Brand managers today work in a world that can be said to be volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) (Schoemaker et al., 2018). VUCA is an acronym originally coined by the US military but has applicability to business environments. While most brand managers do not contend with VUCA environments each day, they need to be aware of what unexpected shifts inmarketplace dynamicsmight mean to their brands. In this new era for brand managers, the “V” in VUCA is most germane and challenging, as the specter of volatility in the environment for firms now looms ominously as illustrated in the following two examples. In August 2017, Starbucks suddenly realized a person

motivated by politics had targeted the firm when tweets advertising “Dreamer Day” spread rapidly across the internet (tweeting that Starbucks was supposedly giving out free Frappuccinos to undocumented migrants in the USA) (Kuchler, 2017). Apparently, the idea for the hoax began at the message and image-board website 4Chan when one user posted “How about we meme ‘Undocumented Immigrant Day’ at Starbucks into existence? Could cripple their business a bit.” With current photo-altering software, a person added #BorderFreeCoffee and

the Twitter brand logo to a barista photo that was then shared online. Not long after this, a text story had been fabricated and then taken up into some of the social-news-aggregation websites, which present what is trending on the internet. This fake news or disinformation – information that is deliberately false or misleading (Vaidhyanathan, 2018, p. 185) – was then tweeted and retweeted as other websites picked up the “story” (Kuchler, 2017). In March 2017, a hacker briefly took over fast-food giant

McDonald’s Twitter account. The hacker tweeted derogatory remarks about US President Donald Trump and endorsed a return of former US President Barack Obama (Whitten, 2017). McDonald’s Corporation took down the rogue tweet twenty minutes after the hacker posted it, but with viewers taking screen captures of the image and sharing these through the internet, the rogue tweet became content for a wide array of media outlets reachingmillions of readers. In both of these instances, major brands became the victims

of technology-enabled persons with intent to use the brands’ reputation for their own twisted purposes. While politics motivated the persons behind these episodes, hopes of increasing ad revenue or attention-seeking motivate much fake news (Kuchler, 2017). The response from both Starbucks and McDonald’s was swift, but such episodes cloud the image of these firms in the mind of many in the public and raise doubts

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:https://www.emerald.com/insight/1061-0421.htm

Journal of Product & Brand Management 29/2 (2020) 234–245 © Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 1061-0421] [DOI 10.1108/JPBM-12-2018-2163]

Received 12 December 2018 Revised 12 May 2019 20 September 2019 Accepted 1 October 2019

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about the security of these firms’ operations – which notably feature the preparation of drink and food to be ingested by consumers encountering such fake news, as well as the disclaiming responses from these firms. Such examples highlight the precarious times brand

managers now find themselves. Fake news is defined as fabricated information that mimics news media content in form, but not intent (Lazer et al., 2018). It is not done with the organizational capabilities of a legitimate news organization. While a fake news response ecosystem has arisen with online fact-checking websites, such as Snopes and numerous others (Snelling, 2018), times have changed. An aggrieved customer, disgruntled employee, struggling competitor or ISIS sympathizer can target a firm for harm – or use the brand’s digital infrastructure for its own aims. Notably, indexes in time-tested books on branding, such as

Kellogg on Branding (Tybout andCalkins, 2005) orBuilding Strong Brands (Aaker, 2010) do not include “fake news” or “post-fact” [when facts are subordinate to one’s political views (McIntyre, 2018, p. 11)] – let alone “VUCA”. Neither do recently published books on branding by respected authors, such as Brand Admiration (Park et al., 2016) nor the theory of the Brand (Levy, 2016). The academic study of fake news per se started around Nyilasy (2019). These books were written for another time when marketers and brand managers had a competitive space only occupied by other competing firms [who generally played by a set of rules of which the public would approve]. However, now hoaxers trying to impress their peers and sophisticated hackers bent on disruption can come into the competitive space with their own rules and wreak havoc with a brand’s image and reputation for the short time they are there. Because these troublemakers use the internet, the effects of their diabolical work can be felt immediately – and all around theworld. What do brand managers need to know for succeeding in an

era of fake news? This article will address this question – and it is an important question. Broadly speaking, the issues for brand managers regarding fake news are similar to what leaders and citizens in any realm of society face with regard to fake news. The importance of interpersonal social-trust is hard to overstate (Holmberg and Rothstein, 2017). Trust keeps a society together. Trust for society’s institutions and trust in each other takes a blow when fake news circulates. Transaction costs increase and more complicated measures are needed to assure things are as they should be. Even if the diminishment of trust resulting from fake news is concentrated in one sub-group of society, the overall effect is to reduce societal trust. Section 1 of this article will present the current situation

regarding fake news along with what teaching tools and research from business schools can be used in developing coping strategies for brand managers in an era of fake news. Then, Section 2 will present a review of principles for reviewing secondary data, such as fake news. Finally, ideas for reducing the likelihood of erroneously using or passing along fake news will conclude in Section 3 of this article.

1. Current situation regarding fake news

1.1 Paradox of the digital age In his book Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, NY Times syndicated-

columnist Thomas L. Friedman asserts that the three largest forces on the planet (technology, globalization, and climate change) are all accelerating at once now (Friedman, 2017, p. 3). The experience of this for an individual, such as Friedman, is dizzying because Friedman’s iPhone allows him to access others and the internet at all hours of the day and night. Like many others at this time in history, Friedman can fill any time in his day that is not planned with time accessing that combination of the internet and computer technology that some call the infosphere (Floridi, 2014). The paradox of the digital age is that at a time when

individuals have access to an unprecedented ability to access an overwhelming amount of information through their smartphones and computers, proneness to gullibility appears to have risen, too. Arum and Roksa (2011) have criticized post- secondary education for not improving students’ ability to think critically (defined as the ability to objectively analyze and evaluate an issue to form a judgment). According to former president of Harvard University, Derek Bok, many students graduate from college today “without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers [. . .] reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, nontechnical problems” (Bok, 2006, p. 8). In a study conducted by the Stanford Graduate School of

Education, researchers spent a year evaluating more than 7,000 students in middle school through college to better understand how these students assess the information they read on the internet (Fields, 2017). The researchers found worrisome results. Students in the study demonstrated a weak ability to discern the authenticity of facts and to assess the reliability of information sources. Despite students’ ability at digital processing (manipulating the keyboard, skimming content, playing GIFs and hyperlinking), many had difficulty making distinctions about content, and judging the reliability of sources. This was combined with the difficulty in distinguishing between advertisements and articles, as well as “fake news” and fact-based news. The world of journalism has shifted at this time of increased

complexity and of enormous flows of information. Major news outlets offer “breaking news” at all times of the day, which raises the question of who could keep up with such a relentless offering of updating ones’ news about the world (Kshetri and Voas, 2017). Market forces have led to the downsizing of newsroom staff (Ember, 2017). Without editors to demand rigorous fact-checking and vetting of content, internet users are increasingly on their own to fend for themselves in what appears to become a more hostile world for information seekers. Additionally, in a digital age glutted withWeb content, skimming headlines appears to be a prominent style of “reading” for individuals. Amy Harder, a journalist with Axios (an online journalism

outlet), reported a recent exchange about her 888-word story titled “Climate change is becoming too big and divisive to solve” (Harder, 2018). “I received a lot of feedback on this article,” Harder said “75 per cent of my time was spent responding to those who did not like the headline. I told one person in one of these exchanges ‘It is explained in the article.’ The response of this person was telling me ‘But I’d have to read down in the article!’ To which I replied ‘Yes, you will have to scroll down.’ What do I tell these people?”

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(Resources for the Future, 2018). Here, readers do not appear to be aware that their “reading” is merely headline skimming and that this habit of skimming would lead them to avoid the mental effort needed for learning in a diligentmanner.

1.2 Rise of fake news Beginning in the 1990s, when journalism scholars talked about “fake news” they were referring to satires and parodies of journalism seen on television shows, such as Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show (McNair, 2017, p. x). Only a fewmentions of “fake news” occurred in themedia until November 2016, and these usually were about hoax artists such as Paul Horner who would fabricate stories (picked up and run bymajor newsmedia outlets) to bring awareness to problems in society. One of these problems, in Horner’s view, was the lack of fact-checking by media elites and consumers of media. One of Horner’s fake stories in Facebook (where Horner liked to present his fake news articles designed to mimic the appearance and style of major media outlets) was about a protester of Donald Trump being paid $3,500 to disrupt Trump rallies. While Horner might have intended to put Trump supporters

in an unfavorable light because they would share and ReTweet his “art”, it appears to have had unintended consequences. According to CBS News, Horner’s stories had an “enormous impact” on the 2016 US Presidential election (Gunaratna, 2016). His stories made their way to Google News known to present stories from reputable news sources. Apparently, many others watched Horner and realized that they, too, could generate fake news to affect the election, and could actually have their websites receive payments for ads on the websites they created for fake news. In the aftermath of the US election, the term “fake news” appeared in hundreds of major media- outlets’ stories each day. On Facebook, the top-performing fake news stories come

from hoax sites and extreme bloggers. Buzzfeed News analyzed the last three months of the 2016 US Presidential election coverage and concluded thatmore online-viewers engaged with fake news (shares, reactions, and comments) from hoax sites and extreme bloggers than engaged with legitimate news- stories from 19majormedia news outlets (Silverman, 2016). With the widespread adoption of Facebook, 68 per cent of

US adults is now Facebook users (Smith and Anderson, 2018). According to Smith and Anderson, seventy-one per cent of these Facebook users say they check the site daily, while 51 per cent say they go to the platform several times each day. In 2018, 43 per cent of Americans reported that they obtain news on Facebook (Matsa and Shearer, 2018). Yet, more than half (53 per cent) admit they do not understand why certain posts are included in their news feed and others are not (Smith, 2018). With 68 per cent of Americans reporting they obtain news on

social media sites, research from the Pew Research Center suggests that the thing liked most about obtaining news on social media is the convenience of it (Matsa and Shearer, 2018). Across countries of the world, a global median of 35 per cent say that they access news each day through social media (Mitchell et al., 2018). While this second study from the Pew Research Center reports that 57 per cent of social-media-news consumers say they expect the news seen on social media to be largely inaccurate, 42 per cent expect such news to be largely accurate – a sizable chunk of social-media-news consumers.

Misinformation (defined as incomplete information) and disinformation (defined as false information deliberately disseminated) abound on the internet (Cooke, 2018). However, it is not new as tabloid journalism (or yellow journalism) intent on engaging the emotions of less critical readers has existed for ages. Spin is a form of misinformation that might have some truthful element to it, but intentionally mischaracterizes things through distortion and the ignoring of facts to influence others (McIntyre, 2018, p. 9). Counter knowledge is misinformation packaged to look like it is a fact that some in the public have begun to believe (Cooke, 2018). Asking questions and evaluating sources are two antidotes for spin and counter knowledge that are both precursors of fake news. But even critical readers of online information face powerful

adversaries that have emerged in recent years. According to a BuzzFeed News report from June 2018 about fake news and digital manipulation in the Mexican elections, fake news creators now bring an industrialized approach to the dissemination of fake news (Broderick, 2018). In this report, the founder of Victory Lab (a fake news creator and disseminator) based in Mexico City, Carlos Merlo, gives a guided tour of one of his 17 fake news offices. The entire office is located in a single room (six meters square) with a dozen Millennial-generation workers working around eight computer terminals – some with wide viewing-screens. Merlo explains that the office makes memes– a humorous

image, video or piece of text that is copied (often with slight adjustments) and spread rapidly by those on the internet. To present fake news as more legitimate, Merlo’s workers have created 4,000 Web “newspapers”. He buys about 100 sim cards for cell phones each week in convenience stores, which require no identification so that the smartphones of his workers will appear as different smartphones each week (and not the same smartphones involved in circulating fake news from the previous week). If his fake news stories came out of the sameWeb newspaper

each week, his fake news would not be believed. Instead, Merlo pushes out his fake news story across his network of “newspapers,” to keep skeptics of the fake news story from finding the source of the story. The “newspapers” run tabloid- like stories, such as one in which actor Paul Walker (featured in the Fast and Furious action-movies, but who died in a car crash in 2014) is said to be alive and held in aMexican jail.More than six million online viewers in Mexico engaged with this fake news story. Merlo asserts that the way to create fake news on Facebook is

to create a webpage (one of his newspapers), insert the fake news story, and then pay about $50,000. This money is used to pay for Facebook accounts (many from Russia or Asia that are then renamed as if Mexican users had created them) and to have his workers create thousands of bots – fake Facebook accounts – who “visit” the webpage and who might leave a comment about the post. He has many of his 4,000 “newspapers” pay to advertise on Facebook alongside the fake news story. His own “newspapers” might even receive advertising dollars from legitimate businesses seeking to place their brands in front of what they believe are human eyeballs viewing these “newspapers”. In this way, Merlo asserts that the real media will soon be talking about the fake news story.

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To prove how the real media will readily use fake news, Merlo demonstrated what Victory Lab can do using Twitter from his smartphone. He created a hashtag “#Gana ConVictorylab” (meaning “Win with Victory Lab”) and then turned over the project to one of his offices. After a two-hour lunch, this hashtag had become the sixth-most tweeted hashtag in Mexico. One member of a digital marketing agency in Mexico (who insisted on anonymity), said such digital manipulation has been going on inMexico for years and that 90 per cent of the trending topics in Mexico are fake because they are driven by bots and fake accounts. So who paysMerlo?While he does not say, one can infer that

any entity that wants fake news circulated, such as political campaigns wanting to create doubt about an opponent or boost their own candidate. When asked if what he does is immoral, Merlo responded that all politics in Mexico is a little immoral (so he feels justified in doing what he does).

2. A future with fake news

2.1 Dark forces emerge to generate fake news Developing countries with few genuine employment opportunities appear to be fertile ground for the growth of fake news factories. Police in Mexico have cybercrime units and are aware of fake news, but have not been able to arrest any fake news creators. Because fake news writers can make thousands of dollars a month in Mexico, it appears that fake news is not going to go away anytime soon and will become huge if left unchecked. In North Macedonia, the town of Veles with a population of

55,000 was the registered home of at least 100 pro-Trump websites in late 2016 prior to the US election (Subramanian, 2017). These websites spawned as part of the Google AdSense program in which Google would pay websites to display ads to these sites based on the content and number of visitors. Website developers, such as one 18-year-oldman in Veles (with no real affinity for Trump, but rather seeking ad money), made $16,000 off of two politically-charged websites from August 2016 to November 2016. (The monthly GDP per capita in North Macedonia is $508 (World Bank, 2018.) Google has taken steps to eliminate such fake news websites from its Google AdSense program. Twitter has proudly identified itself with free speech because

the firm has allowed just about anything to be tweeted within the 140-character limit (Fischer, 2019). Recently, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey acknowledged that Twitter uses algorithms to “personalize” the tweets the algorithm deems to bemost relevant to individual Twitter users (Thompson, 2018). In this way, selection bias would likely result from the type of tweets suggested to Twitter users –

without the Twitter user knowing it. Such a “filter bubble” has led critics of media today to declaim the echo chamber surrounding media users who receive more exposure to news and views similar to their own and less exposure to news and views different than their own (Fischer, 2019). Looking at the future of how fake news could be used, dark

activities come tomind. Two examples are: 1 brands that want to create doubts about competing

brands or to boost their own brand; and

2 individuals seeking revenge on other individuals (perhaps, ex-lovers) or on businesses or trying to show their own importance to others.

2.2 The psychology of reading fake news While silent and invisible observers of their prior choices on platforms have developed algorithms to send individuals news and ads that match their prior choices, filter bubbles are partly created by individuals’ own conscious choices regarding media outlets and internet content through a confirmation bias (Higgins and Freedman, 2013). Remaining in a filter bubble and not seeking divergent views – or at least a broad range of view – would increase the likelihood individuals would lapse into faulty reasoning termed “What you see is all there is” (WYSIATI) (Kahneman, 2011). Here, individuals would consider only the data and information that are “in the room”

or that they have seen when making decisions. A pronounced use of WYSIATI would lead individuals to not even acknowledge the existence of information they have not seen or interacted with directly. Filter bubbles for consuming content on the internet make

fake news easier to tailor to individuals online. They also increase the believability of fake news for individuals in such filter bubbles because of what psychologists have identified as the availability heuristic. This heuristic in thinking results in individuals tending to assess the relative importance of issues by how easy such issues can be retrieved from memory – which is largely determined by the extent of coverage of an issue in the media (Tversky andKahneman, 1973). Nobel-Prize winner Daniel Kahneman (2011) writes about

two systems humans use in mental processing that he terms as System 1 and System 2. System 1 focuses on perception and intuition that enable humans to make sense of their surrounding environments. It allows humans to recognize, orient attention, avoid losses and fear potential threats. Broad cultural knowledge is stored in memory and accessed effortlessly because System 1 is automatic for humans. By comparison, System 2 requires mental effort and focused concentration. It is degraded when humans become fatigued or distracted. System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2

through impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings (Kahneman, 2011). If System 2 endorses these inputs, they become beliefs. When these two systems operate well –which is most of the time – System 2 accepts the inputs of System 1 with little or no modification. When System 1 encounters difficulty, it calls on System 2 to apply more detailed and directed processing that may resolve the difficulty encountered. System 2 is much slower than System 1 in its processing. In this way, System 1 represents “fast thinking”, and System 2 represents “slow thinking”. While expert judgment is made after repeated successful

trials in a domain, gut feel can lead to success for experts (Gladwell, 2007). However, most individuals reading on the internet would not be considered by psychologists to be experts. Given the speed at which many individuals likely apply to their reading of internet content, they are prone to biased thinking as a result of using heuristics – simple procedures that

Brand managers work on fake news

Mark Peterson

Journal of Product & Brand Management

Volume 29 · Number 2 · 2020 · 234–245

237

help find adequate, but often less than perfect answers to questions (Kahneman, 2011). The affect heuristic is the simple procedure individuals tend

to use that results in an individual’s likes and dislikes determining their beliefs about the world (Slovic et al., 2007). This heuristic contributes to what comedian Stephen Colbert has termed “truthiness” – judging the validity of “news” based on how it feels (Berthon and Pitt, 2018). While Colbert’s description of truthiness originally pertained to ideologically- charged spin or slanted reports in the media and on the internet, it points to the role of intuition and emotion individuals use in processing information. Along with the availability heuristic, the affect heuristic

would tend to lead individuals away from using the deliberate thinking of System 2. System 1 brings to mind impressions and intuitions at the same speed as expert learning based on many efforts in the past (Kahneman, 2011). Intuitive answers come to mind swiftly and confidently. Unfortunately, System 1 does not send a signal to System 2 when it becomes unreliable. The way to cope with errors from System 1 is to recognize when one is in a cognitive minefield and engage System 2. In such situations, individualsmust slow their thinking.

2.3 Institutional coping in an age of industrialized fake news The year 2016 might be recognized in future years as the first year of the age of industrialized fake news. In the aftermath of this dark dawning, business schools offer little to understand fake news or ways of coping with fake news. On the Harvard Business School Publishing website, users can find two cases related to fake news: 1 “Facebook Fake News in the Post-Truth World” (Wells

and Winkler, 2017) about Facebook’s rapid rise using social networking and criticism it has received because of serving as a channel and because of becoming an unintended beneficiary of fake news (through ad dollars and more participation on its platform); and

2 “Diana Uribe: Fighting the Viral Spread of Fake News” (Jimenez, 2018).

The Uribe case is about a cultural broadcaster in Colombia who became the victim of fake news story purporting to show a text message she had supposedly sent opposing the peace process with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia guerillas prior to a national plebiscite on a peace deal. Both cases focus on a business protagonist victimized by fake

news (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Uribe). However, the participant-centered pedagogy of the case method focuses on the future role for students as managers, such as the protagonists in these cases. The cases do not address the current problem that students most likely experience –

becoming an unwitting consumer of fake news themselves. Steps toward improving one’s ability to identify and stop fake news are not presented. Interestingly, conventions of case pedagogy actually work

against steps students could take to increase their resistance to fake news. First, case pedagogy, as implemented in most classrooms, usually usesWYSIATI –what you see is all there is. Research outside the case information is considered out of

bounds (even if the case is decades old). Second, case pedagogy allows “bounded relativism” in the discussion of the case. In other words, students can assert what they want about decisions to be made, as long as the analysis of numbers provided is done with computational accuracy. One cannot make errors in numerical analysis, but interpretations of what to do as a protagonist in the case are unlimited. This seems to align with authorMark Twain’s humorous admonition to “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please” (Kipling, 2010). Academic researchers have developed frameworks for

understanding marketplace activity of agentic consumers since the 1980’s when consumer-researcher Russell Belk led a team of researchers across the USA in an RV enabling the team to apply field-research techniques of interpretive research (Belk, 1987). A more recent development in academic research is Service-Dominant Logic, which makes the case for more collaborative relationships between marketplace actors (firms and consumers) in an increasingly networked world (Vargo and Lusch, 2008). While such academic research influenced new views about consumers pursuing identity projects using marketplace ingredients and about more equitable standing in markets for firms and consumers, what was not presented where the potential for dark activity in a networked world. On the production side of fake news, no one really grasped

until after the US Presidential election in 2016 that an 18-year- old guy in a former mining town in North Macedonia who had mediocre soccer and computer skills would be able to earn hundreds of dollars per day through a website that presented fake news stories to the world (Subramanian, 2017). No ideological allegiances motivated such activity. It was simply a lack of economic opportunities for this 18-year-old in a country with a median monthly income of less than $400, combined with a preference for spending money to enjoy late-adolescence impressing friends and acquaintances at local night clubs. The unregulated domain of the internet and its implied amorality also contributed to this phenomenon. While the quality of such North Macedonian-originated fake

news might not have been high in 2016, it fooled many due to heuristic thinking used by readers of such fake news in their filter bubbles. In today’s world, telling the difference between real photos and computer-generated ones is not easy. Software maker Autodesk has a website “Fake or Foto,”which presents a test for viewers on a set of nine images (Autodesk, 2018). The majority of viewers do not correctly identify a majority of the images as being either real or computer-generated. What would it be like if someone with movie-maker

Steven Spielberg’s skills and the creative assets of his studio (including hundreds of actors and technical specialists) created the fake news? Are there governments or quasi- governmental entities out there who might develop their own Speilbergs of fake news with professionally-done videos presenting anyone saying anything in their own voice through computer enhancement and manipulation? What if thousands of fake news stories created in such a way cascaded into the internet in one day? Thinking about such questions should make us shudder. It should. The potential for increased turbulence in an era characterized by VUCA seems to be high.

Brand managers work on fake news

Mark Peterson

Journal of Product & Brand Management

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2.4 Institutions taking defensive measures in a world of fake news Interestingly, the social media platform Snapchat is free of fake news (Chafkin, 2017). This is because the leaders of Snapchat have defined the platform as a place for interacting with one’s best friends, rather than a place to build enormous audiences with persons unknown to one in real life. Snapchat allows users to send and receive texts, photos and videos or “snaps” among fellow users that disappear after opening. Snapchat intentionally keeps the news in the app’s news section Discover to professionally edited content. Any user-generated material that would go in its section Our Stories would be vetted before they would reach a wide audience (1,000 users or more). By comparison, Facebook leaders regard their platform to be an open platform for allowing users to express themselves. Accordingly, Facebook deliberately blurs the line between personal status updates, news articles and ads. Snapchat is not perfect as it has been abused by child

pornographers and its forays into sexualized channels on the app have stoked controversy (Richmond, 2018; Appell, 2018). Its news feed does not include Fox News. While it has generated much interest from investors, it still has not earned a profit (Richmond, 2018). Snapchat continues to evolve – like other platforms.How fast and how effective remains to be seen. Facebook has developed and implementedmachine-learning

tools to identify fake news and now employs 20,000 fact- checkers (Fowler, 2018). Some well-known websites for fake news have been banned from Facebook. Pornography violates Facebook’s community standards and is blocked. Digitally manipulated videos, such as those of a commercial airliners turning upside down about 100 feet above the ground before landing now would have a pop-up tag appear “Additional Reporting on This” with a link to fact-checking organizations. Notifications would be sent to those who shared such a digitally manipulated video. According to preliminary results from academic researchers,

monthly user-interactions with the fake news sites rose on Facebook for two years before peaking at 200 million in late 2016 and then falling to 70 million in the summer of 2018 (Crawford, 2018). While it is not clear what exactly has accounted for this drop, Facebook has made a series of algorithm changes (such as featuring posts from users’ friends and family more prominently than other public content), along with its efforts to identify and demote fake news stories in users’ News Feeds. Facebook does not delete the content because it does not want to be seen as censoring free speech (Stevenson, 2018). By comparison, users of Twitter continued to increase their amount of fake news sharing since late 2016 from under five million shares to almost six million by mid-2018 (Crawford, 2018). Calls for the regulation of social media platforms, such as

Facebook, have begun to be sounded from those in or formerly in government. For example, in the UK, the former head of the intelligence agency Governmental Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) Robert Hannigan told the BBC that if Facebook and other such big companies cannot reform themselves, the reforms will have to come from the outside (BBC, 2018). Until this happens, Facebook’s approach still puts much of the onus for identifying fake news on the

individual user of Facebook. Its fact-checkers cannot review the billions of postsmade each day.

2.5 Individual coping in an age of industrialized fake news On the consumption side of fake news, much can be done to bolster individuals’ readiness to resist fake news. However, individuals must care about the distinction between the truth and what is not true (Steinmetz, 2018). Not caring about facts or the truth is characteristic of a post-fact or post-truth world (Berthon, Treen and Pitt, 2018; McIntyre, 2018). Liars know the truth and push it aside, while those who traffic in bullshit do not necessarily care about the truth at all – but rather “my truth” (Frankfurt, 2009). If one cares about the truth, then using critical thinking (analytical reasoning) needs to be used when online (Waldrop, 2018). This is the route to become savvy media consumers. Yes, it means slowing down one’s thinking and shifting from System 1 mental-processing to System 2 mental processing. Slow is better in reading news on the internet. (Imagine forwarding what later proves to be fake news to one’s boss or teammembers. Howmany times can this be done without damage to one’s reputation in the firm.) Critical thinking is a thought process that involves gathering

and evaluating information to make decisions and solve problems. (Smith, 2012). Critical thinking corresponds to the scientific method – the way humans have developed the ability to determine if something is true or false (Levitin, 2018, p. 21). The essence of the scientific method is “commitment to evidence” (Hunt, 2010, p. 22). It generally corresponds to: � assessment of relevant existing knowledge; � developing research questions or specifying hypotheses; � acquiring data; � analysis of data; and � discussion that puts results into context for others through

an extended provides explanation and an offer of prediction.

The scientific method can be used for a multimillion-dollar research project sponsored by the National Institute of Health. It can also be used for one’s own approach to determining if a news story is fake or real, as well as what confidence to put in the piece if one deems it to be real. Table I depicts a critical thinking guide for fake news. The

left column features the steps in the scientific method. The middle column features focal questions individual readers should ask themselves about a news story. Finally, the right column features takeaways for brand managers – steps to be taken for the purpose of making the brand and its website more effective and resilient in a high-speedworld with fake news: � first, in assessing relevant existing knowledge as the first

step in the scientific method, researchers do a literature review. A savvy reader’s short form of such a literature review might be a review of one’s own knowledge about the topic in question. Individuals who pause and think about the validity of information are better able to detect false information according to research (Bernstein, 2018). In this way, one is not “trusting one’s gut” about the story. Considering what one knows about the source, as well as scrutinizing the URL are valuable steps here, as well. Fake news sites often modify the URL to look like a “.com”

Brand managers work on fake news

Mark Peterson

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website but instead have a “.co” at the end of the URL (which represents the site being registered in the country of Colombia);

� second, a savvy reader’s research question should be “Is this news story fake or real?”; and

� third, in terms of data acquisition, clicking away from the story is crucial to successfully identifying fake news (Kiely and Robertson, 2016).

Purposes for such online searching can be as follows: � to investigate the story; � to search about the author of the story (If none is listed,

this is a red flag.); � to check the date of the story to see if it is recent; � to read beyond the story to understand more completely

the story itself; and � to evaluate the sources that the story cites as support and

determine if such sources actually support the contentions being made in the story.

Fourth, in analyzing the data, a few points should be remembered. Asking oneself if the news story is a parody can help orient one to the possible intentions of the author of such stories. Using fact-checking websites can be especially useful. Such sites include Snopes, Politifact, checkology, The Fact Checker (from The Washington Post), and FactCheck.org. If questionable photos are encountered, these can be uploaded into Google Images to see where else the photo appears on the internet. Additionally, plug-ins for one’s Web browser can be installed that check for fake news in searches made. These can be accessed at the Google Chrome Web store and include B.S. Detector, Official Media Bias Fact Check and fake news detector. Such extensions for browsers will likely to develop in the future. Be on the lookout for these. Fifth, discussion includes putting things into perspective and

being honest with oneself. If stories sound too good to be true, they probably are. Fake news stories are designed to activate the emotional circuitry of the readers and to confirm what readers

already think or want (Bernstein, 2018). Researchers advise savvy readers to question news stories if these stories support one’s own beliefs or passions (Kiely and Robertson, 2016). Asking questions, such as “Why does the author think that? How does the author know that to be true?” puts one into critical thinking. Beware of authors who disparage research or previous thinking on a topic. Stay offline when one is tired. Finally, asking experts, such as librarians who are trained in media literacy, can provide the needed help for brandmanagers seeking to sort fact from fiction in the infosphere.

2.6 Becomingmore savvy when reading news “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”Although this familiar quote is attributed to humoristMarkTwain, in fact, Twain did not claim he originated this saying. However, Twain used it on numerous occasions (Twain Quotes, 2018). Biostatistician Aaron Fisher asserts that Twain’s point in Twain’s autobiography about statistics (Twain, 2010, p. 228) was not that statistics obfuscates the truth, but that statistics interpreted without the proper context of the statistics can prove to bemisleading (Fisher, 2015). Fittingly, coverage of the 2016 US Presidential election

served up this example on the day before the election in November 2016. Here, an election that was too close to call should have been presented as an election too close to call – not one in which one candidate is ahead of the other (but not beyond the margin of error for the study). This example comes from Clement and Guskin’s (2016) article in the Washington Post the day before the 2016 US Presidential election. The headline should have been “Post-ABC Tracking Poll: Election is Too Close to Call”. Instead, the headline read “Post-ABC Tracking Poll: Clinton 47, Trump 43 on election eve.” The headline implied toomuch for Clinton’s polling advantage. Five paragraphs into the story, Clement and Guskin dutifully

presented the statistical qualification on the results, as follows:

“The latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll shows Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a dead heat nationally. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Table I Critical thinking guide for fake news

Step in the scientific method Focal question for individuals Takeaways for brand managers

1. Assess relevant knowledge

What is the news story saying? Provide a readable website What do I know about this topic? Update it weekly (SMEs) Is the source really legitimate? Update it daily (corporations)

2. Develop a research question

Is this news story fake? Monitor the infosphere Enlist all employees in monitoring for fake news

3. Acquiring data What is the news’ context? Maintain the history and meaning of wrong information on the brand’s website

(Its history and meaning for others)

4. Analysis of data Is the news a parody? Maintain a list of the prominent satires and parodies featuring the brand on the brand website

What results come from image and fact-checking websites?

5. Discussion Why does the author think that? Hang out in tribal groups of the internet Maintain a media relations staff to field inquiries about the brand and news/ discussion related to the brand

How does the author know that to be true? What are my biases that might lead me to believe or resist this news?

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Clinton’s edge in the Post-ABC poll does not reach statistical significance given the poll’s 2.5 percentage-point margin in sampling error around each candidate’s support, although a lead of this size would be a comfortable margin on Election Day.” (Clement and Guskin, 2016)

At the end of the story, Clement and Guskin also presented details about the sampling used in the study and the resulting errormargin.

“This Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone November 3-6, 2016, among a random national sample of 3,218 adults including landline and cell phone respondents. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus two points; the error margin is plus or minus 2.5. Sampling, data collection, and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York.” (Clement and Guskin, 2016)

In sum, the surprising outcome of the USA election in 2016 stung media outlets and the pundits of these media outlets. In the Clement and Guskin (2016) article, the Washington Post actually presented the elements needed to make the correct judgment about the election’s outcome (that it was too close to call). However, the authors did not serve their readers well in the way they presented their numbers. Busy readers likely regarded the supplemental information (margin of error of 2.5 per cent for the poll) as being inconsequential because the headline (presented in amuch larger font-size than the font-size of the article’s text) trumpeted Clinton’s advantage was four percentage points on the day before the election. Polling results carry with them a degree of uncertainty. They

are not like scores in sporting contests. If one team is 4 points ahead of the other team in a basketball game, there is no error margin about the four-point separation. However, in using field research, a 4-point separation might actually be a tie because of a 2.5-point margin of error. (In Clinton’s worst case, her 47 per cent might actually be 2.5 points less and be 44.5 (47 – 2.5 = 44.5). In Trump’s best case, his 43 per cent might actually be 2.5 pointsmore and be 45.5 (431 2.5 = 45.5). Because these two worst and best-case scenarios flipped the

original winner and loser, the polling results had too much uncertainty. By polling standards, a 2.5-point margin of error offered more precision than most national polls in elections since 1992, which posted an average 2.7-point margin of error in elections since 1992 (Kennedy et al., 2018) (In the actual election results, Clinton garnered 48.5 per cent of the popular vote, while Trump earned 46.4 per cent. Clinton won 232 votes in the Electoral College, while Trump had 306).

Margins of error need to be included and properly emphasized when reporting descriptive results from survey research. Figure 1 depicts the correct way to do this. Here, themargins of error are depicted on the respective bars with a connecting horizontal (dashed) line illustrating how the margins of error overlap. An accompanying text box makes the margins of error and their overlap explicit and offers the correct interpretation –

too close to call.

2.7 Coping for brandmanagers in an age of industrialized fake news Brand managers must think critically as readers of news, and they must think about reported statistics in terms of margins of error, as the previous sections described. However, brand managers can also take pre-emptive steps to make their brands more resilient in an era of fake news. A brand (its name, term, design, symbol or other feature that

distinguishes an organization or product from its rivals) is a continually updated cognitive schema or set of associations in themind of the customer (Calkins, 2005). Berthon et al. (2018) propose that brands evolve because the customer’s ongoing experiences with the brand. Because of this dynamic aspect of brands, these researchers further propose that brands today would be better regarded by brand managers as processes –

rather than as objects. Specifically, these researchers assert that brands should bemanaged as perceptual processes. The right side of Table I depicts takeaways for brand

managers that correspond to the critical thinking of the scientific method. These are actionable ideas to increase the likelihood of healthy development for a brand in today’s VUCA environment, which now includes fake news. First, to assist consumers and other stakeholders of the firm assess relevant knowledge related to news stories, brand managers should make sure that the brand’s website is readable and accessible to all. For small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this website should be updated weekly with news about the brand. For large corporations, this website should be updated daily. Second, brand managers must have staff members monitor

the infosphere daily to identify misinformation/disinformation about the brand. All employees should be enlisted in this scanning for fake news about the brand. Brand managers should consider the degree of audience involvement in an issue

Figure 1 How the media should have presented the 2016 election eve polling results

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before deciding how strong the brand’s response should be (Vafeiadis et al., 2019). Third, the brand manager should maintain on the brand’s

website the history of such fake news stories about the brand and how the firm refuted such fake news. Fourth, in a similar way, the brand’s website should list the prominent satires (news stories told in a humorous way) in which the brand appeared, as well as the prominent parodies (fictitious news stories that the intended audience knows to be non-factual), which featured the brand. After the parody website The Onion reported that North Korean dictator Kim JungUn had been chosen as the “sexiest man alive” in 2012, The People’s Daily in China ran a 55-page photo spread on Kim (Tandoc et al., 2018). Having such parodies listed on the brand’s website will allow journalists and others doing fact- checking tomore speedily come to the truth. Fifth, as part of the discussion, brandmanagers can have staff

members visit places on the internet where the brand is discussed. Monsanto has done this by having its Director of Millennial Engagement, Vance Crowe, “hang out” online with different tribes (Kuchler, 2017). As a “big Ag” corporation and maker of pesticides and GMOs, such as Round-Up Ready corn seed, Monsanto has had Crowe monitor Twitter, and go to sites, such as Reddit and GMO-skeptic YouTube channels. Crowe did this for the purpose of engaging with the underlying values of the agriculture tribe. In other words, to learn from the tribe and to clarify non-factual elements being discussed among tribemembers. When engaging the tribe, Crowe has learned that social

media posts among the tribe members are expressions of group loyalty. If a tribe member’s idea receives criticism by an outsider, the members of the tribe regard such criticism as an attack on their friend (not the friend’s idea). Accordingly, Crowe has learned that his posts are more effective if they express understanding for tribe members’ ideas and respectfully present Monsanto’s perspective on the issue in question (without directly criticizing others’ ideas). This corresponds to Colliander’s (2019) research suggesting that social-media users regard the comments of other social-media users more highly than disclaimers issued by brands. A more traditional media-relations staff can field inquiries

about the brand and generate press releases about the brand. For non-professional journalists, authenticity and emotional engagement will likely be important for successful responses by the brand (Mills and Robson, 2019). After a fake news story appeared on WorldTruth.TV claimed pesticides caused microcephaly cases in Brazil (rather than the Zika virus), Monsanto had employees use social media identifying themselves as working with Monsanto and represent the brand to friends and contacts (Kuchler, 2017). Narrative response and storytelling are ways such narrative

responses by the brand can be done (Mills and Robson, 2019). For example, a narrative response might begin in the following way: “I was reading your post and it caught my attention because I regularly read posts about this brand. I use to share the same idea about this issue until I talkedwith researchers in the laboratory”.

2.8 Looking to the future for Brandmanagers in a world of fake news Looking to the future, fake news and rumor detection by brand managers (as well as the brand’s media-relations staff) will

likely be boosted by machine-learning algorithms (Bondielli and Marcelloni, 2019; Zhang et al., 2019). Currently, these algorithms are based on text analysis and statistical techniques, such as neural networks analysis, tree analysis for classification, as well as logistic regression. While automatic processing is the ideal, hybrid approaches featuring algorithms and humans working together are experiencing success. Having algorithms make possible detections of fake news can improve the effectiveness of staff members who would then verify (and possibly respond to) such emerging fake news stories. While automation will likely improve fake news detection in

the future, brand managers will likely have to require its ad- placement intermediaries and affiliate networks to become intelligent intermediaries when placing the brand’s ads on social media platforms (such as Facebook) (Mills, Pitt and Ferguson, 2019). Hybrid approaches featuring software and humans (or at least requirements for verified content on a social media platform) might need to be implemented for the purpose of ensuring ad-placement quality. The recent practice of allowing social media platforms to place advertising moment to moment next to trending content using the social media platform’s own algorithms has resulted in brand advertising appearing next to fake news (which is not a favorable association for the brand to take in themind of readers). Brand managers can also take aim at macro-level responses

in the future, too. For example, brandmanagers could join with others to initiate social-marketing campaigns intended to encourage cultural shifts in attitudes toward passing on fake news (Talwar et al., 2019). In this way, such careless behavior would be positioned as unfashionable or unseemly (in the same way gossiping can be perceived as negative behavior). Such social marketing is in the spirit of using both a consumer- culture theoretic (CCT) lens along with a macro marketing one to address societal problems (Fischer, 2019).

3. Conclusion

Consumers undertake journeys in pursuit of life goals – big and small (Hamilton and Price, 2019). Today, these journeys will increasingly lead consumers into encounters with fake news or disinformation. In such an era, authenticity from brands will matter more, as truth becomes a more prized commodity in the infosphere (Godin, 2005). Brand managers must be ready to respond to fake news about their brands (Berthon and Pitt, 2018). They must be vigilant to make sure their brands are not placed next to fake news content on social media platforms and Google. They must make sure their social-media strategies do not lead them to sponsor websites that traffic in fake news –

even though such websites might attract potential customers. They must demand more from social-media platforms to developmore effective defensivemeasures regarding fake news. Each of these steps for brand managers implies emphasizing

more human aspects in their operations in the era of fake news. It will take additional well-trained staff to develop effective responses for the organizations sponsoring brands and to markedly increase the likelihood the organization’s brands are not associated with fake news – either intentionally or unintentionally. Like savvy readers who must more frequently shift from

System 1 intuitive responses on the internet to more thoughtful

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processing of System 2, brand managers must also slow down their current activity-level in promoting their brands. They must do this to ensure the integrity of those brands and prevent the network of associations connected to their brands from becoming contaminated with linkages to fake news. Traffic calming interventions (such as speed bumps,

narrowing of roads and widening of crosswalks) have proven to reduce accidents on roadways of the world (Elvik, 2001). Brand managers must adopt similar measures in today’s world characterized by VUCA – volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. By slowing things down, taking steps to build resiliency into the capabilities of the staff supporting the brand, and making appropriate responses to fake news, brand managers will increase the likelihood of avoiding unwanted crashes caused by fake news on the more dangerous highways of today’s internet.

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Zhang, C., Gupta, A., Kauten, C., Deokar, A.V. and Qin, X. (2019), “Detecting fake news for reducing misinformation risks using analytics approaches”, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 279No. 3.

Further reading

Demers, J. (2017), “The 7 biggest social media fails of 2017”, Entrepreneur, May 30, 2017, available at: www.entrepreneur. com/article/294925

Manjoo, F. (2008), True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, JohnWiley & Sons, NewYork, NY.

Corresponding author Mark Peterson can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Brand managers work on fake news

Mark Peterson

Journal of Product & Brand Management

Volume 29 · Number 2 · 2020 · 234–245

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