doxa.comunicación | nº 29, pp. 197-212 | 197

July-December of 2019

ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978

Jesús Miguel Flores Vivar. Professor at the Complutense University Madrid (UCM) and research professor (UPB, University of Perugia, and UNMSM). He was previously a professor at Nebrija University and The Open University of Catalonia (UOC). He is a lecturer and visiting professor at Latin American universities and a speaker at congresses and seminars in prestigious international institutions, such as Harvard University, UCLA (U.S.A), University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) UNAM, Mexico and Italian universities, among others. He has had research stays at the UNESP (Brazil) and the University of California Davis (U.S.A). Author and co-author of twenty books and a hundred articles in specialized indexed journals, he is also the principal investigator of projects on cyberjournalism. He has received the Ideas and EBTs awards (OTRI-UCM). P.hD in Information Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid.

Complutense University of Madrid, Spain

[email protected]

ORCID: 0000-0003-1849-5315

Abstract:

The article addresses disinformation as a phenomenon that goes far beyond the term “fake news.” These terms have been appropriated and misused by powerful actors to underestimate news coverage, giving rise to disinformation and, therefore, a sharp fall in news organizations’ credibility. Disinformation includes all forms of falsehood, inaccurate or misleading information, intentionally designed, presented, and promoted to cause public harm or for profit. To counteract this phenomenon, institutions, organizations, universities, the media, and governments have backed several initiatives. Many of these initiatives rely on artificial intelligence that designs and develops bots and platforms through algorithms, whose objective is to fight against information toxicity. This paper analyzes the main developments of bots used to mitigate the impact of fake news.

Keywords:

Journalism, fake-news, artificial intelligence, disinformation, bots.

Resumen:

El artículo aborda la desinformación como un fenómeno que va mu-cho más allá del término “noticias falsas”, conocido cada vez más en su modismo anglosajón `Fake news´. Estos términos han sido apropia-dos y usados engañosamente por poderosos actores para desestimar la cobertura informativa dando lugar a una completa desinformación y, por tanto, a una caída vertiginosa de la credibilidad de las organizacio-nes de noticias. La desinformación incluye todas las formas de lo falso, información inexacta o engañosa diseñada, presentada y promovida para causar intencionalmente daño público o con fines de lucro. Para contrarrestar este fenómeno, instituciones, organizaciones, medios de comunicación y gobiernos vienen promoviendo diversas iniciativas. Muchas de estas iniciativas recalan en la inteligencia artificial que, con el arte de los algoritmos, diseñan y desarrollan bots y plataformas cuyo objetivo es luchar contra la toxicidad de la información. El artículo analiza los principales desarrollos de bots utilizados para minimizar el impacto de las fake news.

Palabras clave:

Periodismo, noticias-falsas, desinformación, inteligencia-artificial, bots.