Abstract:

The present article is the result of a good teaching practice carried out in the social communication and public relations careers of the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador: in which the students made a revision of social media in the context of the elections in Ecuador on march 2019. In the process, 548 fake publications, from which the characterization of the information was made, like the process of fact-checking, were we took reference from the methodology proposed by the International Fack-Checher Networdk for the verification of doubtful content in the web. Among the most important findings it was established that Facebook is the principal website with fake news diffusion and that the fake content comes mainly from anonymous and false fanpages, most of them disappear in a short period of time. In general, the proliferation of fake news allows to expand the vision of the necessity of an informative intervention on a professional level, training of empowered and active journalists with regard to the principles of the profession, as an alternative for this world phenomenon.

Keywords:

Fake news, journalism, fact checking, social media, Facebook.