Fake or Credible? Towards Designing Services to Support Users' Credibility Assessment of News Content

TL;DR

This paper explores designing user interface features for a fake news detection service to help users assess news credibility, filling a gap in practical design knowledge.

Contribution

It presents the first design cycle of a fake news detection interface based on source credibility theory, with qualitative evaluation insights.

Findings

Participants found the prototype useful and desirable.

The design supports users' credibility assessment.

Lightweight application preferred by users.

Abstract

Fake news has become omnipresent in digitalized areas such as social media platforms. While being disseminated online, it also poses a threat to individuals and societies offline, for example, in the context of democratic elections. Research and practice have investigated the detection of fake news with behavioral science or method-related perspectives. However, to date, we lack design knowledge on presenting fake news warnings to users to support their individual news credibility assessment. We present the journey through the first design cycle on developing a fake news detection service focusing on the user interface design. The design is grounded in concepts from the field of source credibility theory and instantiated in a prototype that was qualitatively evaluated. The 13 participants communicated their interest in a lightweight application that aids in the news credibility assessment and rated the design features as useful as well as desirable.