Disinformation Detection: A review of linguistic feature selection and classification models in news veracity assessments

Over the past couple of years, the topic of "fake news" and its influence over people's opinions has become a growing cause for concern. Although the spread of disinformation on the Internet is not a new phenomenon, the widespread use of social media has exacerbated its effects, providing more channels for dissemination and the potential to "go viral." Nowhere was this more evident than during the 2016 United States Presidential Election. Although the current of disinformation spread via trolls, bots, and hyperpartisan media outlets likely reinforced existing biases rather than sway undecided voters, the effects of this deluge of disinformation are by no means trivial. The consequences range in severity from an overall distrust in news media, to an ill-informed citizenry, and in extreme cases, provocation of violent action. It is clear that human ability to discern lies from truth is flawed at best. As such, greater attention has been given towards applying machine learning approaches to detect deliberately deceptive news articles. This paper looks at the work that has already been done in this area.