The Information Professional’s Role in the Fake News Phenomenon

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to analyze the main characteristics of the Fake News phenomenon in the Information Science field. With the digital era and the use of new technologies, new information consumption habits have appeared, which favor the dissemination of distorted or false information on digital platforms. Information professionals traditionally had control of the resources to satisfy the informational needs of their users. Reference sources were reliable and there was a certain guarantee and control of the information. In the digital era, informational professionals have lost the information monopoly and have been forced to share knowledge with Internet sites and social network sites that offer a broad array of information. The dissemination of this knowledge has led to the emergence of a new concept: Fake News. Information professionals cannot ignore fake News and two essential tasks can be used to ensure truth. First, the use of resources that allow the information professional to filter and curate information to provide an adequate informational resource for users. Secondly, to provide strategies to fight fake news. Accordingly, we propose a guide that provides tools and resources to help users to check information obtained through new technologies. Additionally, these resources, tools and recommendations could enable information professionals to digitally curate information that could later be offered to end users. We have reviewed papers and recommendations from a wide variety of institutions as well as international media to create an implementation guide for the information that is our workspace.