King's College London

A new book, written by King’s students and published collaboratively by King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC) and NATO, sets out to provide an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon known as Fake News.

Fake News: A Roadmap is the first comprehensive publication to discuss the character, consequence, and challenges of Fake News. It aims to inject clarity into the confusion of misinformation and disinformation that affects politics today.

As well as providing a more in-depth look at Fake News than in other literature currently available, issues discussed in the book have been submitted to the Fake News inquiry currently being held by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee of the House of Commons. The book will also be freely available to anyone across the globe.

Dr Neville Bolt, Director of KCSC, says: `KCSC is committed to innovative ideas and research in Strategic Communications and the contributions of our students. Fake News: A Roadmap is testimony to this.

‘We hope our students offer innovative thinking on important topics such as populist politics, paths to truth and the impact of digitisation and that their ideas will enrich the conversations around Fake News. It’s a concept which is becoming increasingly problematic in today’s society.’

Jānis Sārts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, says, ‘The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence takes new challenges in the information environment very seriously. Although fake news is nothing new, there are new techniques for hostile information to be spread faster and more effectively. We need intellectual rigour and big thinking to inspire new ways for governments and societies to approach these challenges. Our cooperation with King’s College London and their bright students has brought us a much needed insight into the fake news phenomenon.’

Fake News: A Roadmap is the first publication to be written and edited by 15 MA students while studying strategic communications at King’s. A new full MA course in Strategic Communications will begin at King’s in September 2018.”

The King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC) is the leading global centre of expertise in Strategic Communications. Led by internationally renowned experts from the Department of War Studies and partners from the policy and practitioner communities, it provides practical solutions to the contemporary communication challenges rooted in cutting-edge academic research.

The book will be officially launched at an event in London on Wednesday 28th February.

Fake News: A Roadmap - Authors: Iona Allan, Jente Althuis, Alexander Averin, Giulia Conci, Sarah Dooley, Erin Duffy, Douglas Gray, Leonie Haiden, Mitchell Ilbury, Natalia Kantovich, Chelsea McManus, Celeste Michaud, Emma Moore, Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi, Siri Strand. Editors: Jente Althuis, Leonie Haiden

ENDS

For further information please contact the Public Relations Department at King’s College London on 0207 848 3202 or  pr@kcl.ac.uk

For more information about King's, visit the  King's in Brief web pages