Production and Dissemination of Fake News, and Regulation: from A Macro Perspective

Fake news reveals the most stimulating problem of the times. Academic research is expanding as controversy increases, but it is difficult to obtain a comprehensive understanding of fake news unless a large amount of research results are examined one by one due to the complex intertwining of various sub-topics. Therefore, this paper aims to gain a macroscopic understanding of the production, dissemination, and regulation of fake news through a single research result. First, the current major discussions and issues on the concept and scope of fake news were investigated, and the causes and propagation processes of fake news were reviewed to confirm how changes in the media environment and human psychology affect the spread of fake news. It also investigated the controversial discussion on the regulation of fake news and suggested that the regulation should be minimized in terms of freedom of expression and that it is desirable to be implemented in an alternative way, such as technical regulation. It is hoped that this article can contribute to streamlining the theoretical review of the research field, especially the convergence academic field, which finds new ways to effectively manage and regulate fake news by providing a macroscopic understanding of fake news through the above discussion.