Online Falsehood
Unprecedented advances in new media technologies have revolutionized how people create and consume information in this digital age (Hamari et al., 2016; Westlund & Färdigh, 2015). They have given rise to new avenues for dissemination and collection of information. In particular, traditional word-of-mouth is now complemented by electronic word-of-mouth, an umbrella term that refers to all types of online messages created by Internet users (Hennig‐Thurau et al., 2004; Westlund & Färdigh, 2015).
While truckloads of online information are continuously being created, their quality can vary intensely from fact to fiction (Hornik et al., 2015). This is mainly because they are neither always created by domain experts nor guaranteed to be scrutinized by vigilant gatekeepers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, online falsehood is known to sprout as a digital weed on the fertile soil of technology (Mazer et al., 2015; Smith et al., 2014).
Online falsehood encompasses the phenomenon whereby unfounded and unverified online messages leave behind their digital footprint in the form of texts, pictures or videos on the Internet. What is worrying is that such dubious messages are often mistaken as facts, and in turn cause people to take actions that they would not have taken otherwise. For instance, the hoax that consuming iodized table salt would help minimize the harmful effects of a possible radiation leak at the Fukushima nuclear plant in the wake of the Japanese earthquake in March 2011 caused people to stockpile salt (World Health Organization, 2011). Likewise, the doomsday rumor in China resulted in public fears that starting from 21 December 2012, there would be three consecutive days of darkness on the earth. As people prepared to deal with the prolonged darkness, candles went out of stock (Wang, Zhao, & Huang, 2014). Understandably, such hoaxes are not easily separable from truths. If people end up believing the former at the expense of the latter, a social disaster is definitely on the cards.