Teens, social media and fake news : a user’s perspective

How do teens perceive and interact with fake news on social media platforms? To answer this question, this study adopts a user’s perspective to enrich a growing literature on young people and fake news. Drawing on focus groups conducted in Brussels, it contributes to the identification of key elements shaping interactions between teens and fake news. Firstly, this study highlights the importance of recognizing that fake news identification is not an automatic process. It is therefore crucial to understand teens’ ability to detect fake news and to negotiate their meanings in a complex technological and social environment. Secondly, this contribution highlights the importance of teens’ agency on social media, which often takes the form of both small actions and inactions. Teens develop various strategies to influence what news is proposed to them on their newsfeed. Thirdly, this study confirms that users’ emotions are critical in news circulation and that their role should not be seen as intrinsically negative. Overall, this study offers insights on the diverse meanings of fake news for teens and sketches ways of addressing disinformation among them.