Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months, you would have undoubtedly come across the term "fake news". But what is it all actually about?

So what are fake news websites?


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These are websites that are intentionally set up to publish news stories that are actually incorrect. They use social media to great effect to broaden their reach, as people share the stories without realising that they are false.

Is it a problem?


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In short: yes. There is a view that Donald Trump's shock victory in the US election was helped by fake news stories. An example of this was the story that Democratic senators wanted to impose sharia law in Florida, which even Trump's nominee for national security adviser Michael Flynn shared - at the time not realising that it was false. Buzzfeed found that fake news stories actually outperformed real news on Facebook in the last three months of the election, which is pretty terrifying. The top two fake news stories were: "Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for President, releases statement" and "WikiLeaks CONFIRMS Hillary sold weapons to ISIS...then drops another BOMBSHELL! Breaking news."

What is Facebook doing about the problem of fake news?


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Facebook received a huge amount of criticism from people thinking it wasn't doing enough to combat the issue. In response, the social media site has unveiled a string of measures to ensure users are not presented with fake news on the site

Earlier in April the social network introduced a new educational tool to help users spot fake news stories, which will appear as a prompt as the top of the app's News Feed.

Facebook says it has worked in with news literacy and fact-checking organisations such as Full Fact in the UK, to create the new guidance.

You can read the full list of tips here.

What are some other examples of fake news stories?


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In October of last year, millions of people watched a Facebook Live video claiming to be of a lightbulb being changed at the top of a 1,999ft tower. Posted on the Facebook pages for Interestinate and USA Viral it claimed to be a four-hour long live video - in fact, it was a loop of an 18 minute-long video that had already been filmed. Other stories range from the damaging: "President Obama confirms he will refuse to leave office if Trump is elected," to the ridiculous: "Florida man dies in meth-lab explosion after lighting farts on fire."

More recent examples include false stories such as French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen apparently planning to build a wall around France with Algerian money.

What can you do about fake news?

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The rise of fake news means that you have to be ever-vigilant when reading content online. When reading a story, ask yourself whether you recognise the publisher, if it's been reported elsewhere, if it's fully backed up by evidence, or if it's a photograph, whether it could be of something else.

As well as Facebook, Google has pledged to improve the tools they use to monitor such content.

In response, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launched a new crowd-funded news service called Wikitribune to help combat fake news.

Read more: Why you should think twice before clicking 'Like' on Facebook