Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Fool’s Errand

Electronic data

  • april-fools-preprint

    Submitted manuscript, 307 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

  • dearden

    Accepted author manuscript, 307 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

View graph of relations

Fool’s Errand: Looking at April Fools Hoaxes as Disinformation through the Lens of Deception and Humour

Research output: Contribution to conference - Without ISBN/ISSN Conference paperpeer-review

Published

Standard

Fool’s Errand: Looking at April Fools Hoaxes as Disinformation through the Lens of Deception and Humour. / Dearden, Edward; Baron, Alistair.
2019. Paper presented at 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and
Intelligent Text Processing, La Rochelle, France.

Research output: Contribution to conference - Without ISBN/ISSN Conference paperpeer-review

Harvard

Dearden, E & Baron, A 2019, 'Fool’s Errand: Looking at April Fools Hoaxes as Disinformation through the Lens of Deception and Humour', Paper presented at 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and
Intelligent Text Processing, La Rochelle, France, 7/04/19 - 13/04/19.

APA

Dearden, E., & Baron, A. (2019). Fool’s Errand: Looking at April Fools Hoaxes as Disinformation through the Lens of Deception and Humour. Paper presented at 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and
Intelligent Text Processing, La Rochelle, France.

Vancouver

Dearden E, Baron A. Fool’s Errand: Looking at April Fools Hoaxes as Disinformation through the Lens of Deception and Humour. 2019. Paper presented at 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and
Intelligent Text Processing, La Rochelle, France.

Author

Dearden, Edward ; Baron, Alistair. / Fool’s Errand : Looking at April Fools Hoaxes as Disinformation through the Lens of Deception and Humour. Paper presented at 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and
Intelligent Text Processing, La Rochelle, France.17 p.

Bibtex

@conference{3fb534946b3a4f219205d525e87fa080,
title = "Fool{\textquoteright}s Errand: Looking at April Fools Hoaxes as Disinformation through the Lens of Deception and Humour",
abstract = "Every year on April 1st, people play practical jokes on one another and news websites fabricate false stories with the goal of making fools of their audience. In an age of disinformation, with Facebook under fire for allowing “Fake News” to spread on their platform, every day can feel like April Fools{\textquoteright} day. We create a dataset of April Fools{\textquoteright} hoax news articles and build a set of features based on past research examining deception, humour, and satire. Analysis of our dataset and features suggests that looking at the structural complexity and levels of detail in a text are the most important types of feature in characterising April Fools{\textquoteright}. We propose that these features are also very useful for understanding Fake News, and disinformation more widely.",
author = "Edward Dearden and Alistair Baron",
year = "2019",
month = apr,
day = "7",
language = "English",
note = "20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and<br/>Intelligent Text Processing, CICLing 2019 ; Conference date: 07-04-2019 Through 13-04-2019",

}

RIS

TY - CONF

T1 - Fool’s Errand

T2 - 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and<br/>Intelligent Text Processing

AU - Dearden, Edward

AU - Baron, Alistair

PY - 2019/4/7

Y1 - 2019/4/7

N2 - Every year on April 1st, people play practical jokes on one another and news websites fabricate false stories with the goal of making fools of their audience. In an age of disinformation, with Facebook under fire for allowing “Fake News” to spread on their platform, every day can feel like April Fools’ day. We create a dataset of April Fools’ hoax news articles and build a set of features based on past research examining deception, humour, and satire. Analysis of our dataset and features suggests that looking at the structural complexity and levels of detail in a text are the most important types of feature in characterising April Fools’. We propose that these features are also very useful for understanding Fake News, and disinformation more widely.

AB - Every year on April 1st, people play practical jokes on one another and news websites fabricate false stories with the goal of making fools of their audience. In an age of disinformation, with Facebook under fire for allowing “Fake News” to spread on their platform, every day can feel like April Fools’ day. We create a dataset of April Fools’ hoax news articles and build a set of features based on past research examining deception, humour, and satire. Analysis of our dataset and features suggests that looking at the structural complexity and levels of detail in a text are the most important types of feature in characterising April Fools’. We propose that these features are also very useful for understanding Fake News, and disinformation more widely.

M3 - Conference paper

Y2 - 7 April 2019 through 13 April 2019

ER -