Crime-Fake News Nexus

Introduction

Following the surge in false stories during the 2016 U.S. elections, there has been increased scrutiny on the phenomenon of fake news by practitioners, academics, and policymakers (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; Silverman, 2016). Fake news has gained prominence throughout the world since then, with the intent or potential to undermine public institutions, incite social tensions, and interfere with political processes in affected countries (Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods, 2018; Tan & Ang, 2017). Consequently, governments worldwide have been deliberating and stepping up on legislative and non-legislative measures to combat the threat of fake news to social and political stability (Haciyakupoglu, Hui, Suguna, Leong, & Abdul Rahman, 2018). Furthermore, mounting pressure on technology companies to manage the spread of fake news has led tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter to pioneer efforts to address this problem (Drozdiak, 2018; Foo, 2018).

However, the study and management of fake news is a complex issue. To begin with, the concept of “fake news” is not new as the origins of fake news can be traced back to ancient Rome, where it has been used as a method to consolidate political power. Most famously, during a power struggle for the Roman Empire in 32 BC between Octavian and Mark Anthony, Octavian illegally ‘acquired’ and read out Anthony’s will to the Roman Senate as proof that Mark Anthony had betrayed the Roman people and that he was a puppet of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra (Johnson, 1978). To this date, the degree to which Octavian tampered the contents of the will before he read it out to the Senate, is still debatable (Sirianni, 1984). Nevertheless, history will show that it succeeded in turning the people of Rome against Mark Anthony (MacDonald, 2017). This is just one of many cases where fake news has influenced the way people live their lives.

Recognising its potential impact on society and national security, this phenomenon has become an important topic to examine and understand. Existing studies on fake news has focused on different areas of research, such as identifying the actors behind the creation and spread of fake news (Marwick & Lewis, 2017), as well as the psychological vulnerabilities of individuals which contribute to their beliefs in false information (Ecker, Lewandowsky, Fenton, & Martin, 2014).

Another emerging area of concern is the connection between fake news and crime. From the ‘Pizzagate conspiracy’ in the United States which led a man to fire his rifle in a restaurant after conspiracy theorists linked it to a fictitious child sex ring (“‘Pizzagate’ gunman sentenced to four years,” 2017), to false rumours instigating violence and destruction of Muslim properties by Buddhist mobs in Sri Lanka (Taub & Fisher, 2018), fake news has become intertwined with criminal offences of various magnitudes across the globe. Singapore, for example, has also seen a recent emergence of bitcoin investment scams that employ fake news to deceive their victims (Tee, 2018). Despite this emerging nexus between fake news and criminal conduct, there is a dearth of literature examining this convergence to date.