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The proliferation of the Internet and smartphones has brought significant changes to the media landscape since the turn of the 21st century. 

This has created a shift in the consumption of print media channels, as people increasingly consume news through e-readers, smartphones, and other personal electronic devices, as opposed to the more traditional formats of newspapers, magazines, or television news channels. News organizations are challenged to fully monetize their digital wing, as well as improvise on the context in which they publish in print. Newspapers have seen print revenues sink at a faster pace than the rate of growth for digital revenues.

“Fake news” is also deliberately untruthful information, which can often spread quickly on social media or by means of fake news websites. News cannot be regarded as “fake”, but disinformation rather.It is often published to intentionally mislead readers to ultimately benefit a cause, organization or an individual. A glaring example was the proliferation of fake news in social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and lies have been circulated under the guise of news reports to benefit specific candidates. 

One example is a fabricated report of Hillary Clinton’s email which was published by a non-existent newspaper called The Denver Guardian. Many critics blamed Facebook for the spread of such material. Its news feed algorithm, in particular, was identified by Vox as the platform where the social media giant exercise billions of editorial decisions every day. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok are distributors of disinformation or “fake news”.Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has acknowledged the company’s role in this problem: in a testimony before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing on 20 April 2018, he said:

It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.Readers can often evaluate credibility of news by examining the credibility of the underlying news organization.The phrase was popularized and used by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign to discredit what he perceived as negative news coverage of his candidacy and then the presidency. 

In some countries, including Turkey, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Montenegro Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Somalia journalists have been threatened or arrested for allegedly spreading fake news about the pandemic. On 4 March 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish “knowingly false information” about the Russian armed forces and their operations, leading to some media outlets in Russia to stop reporting on Ukraine or shutting their media outlet. 

As of December 2022, more than 4,000 people were prosecuted under “fake news” laws in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At least 1,000 Russian journalists have fled Russia since February 2022.