Bad PR: Fire Accelerator for Fake News
Strongest fake news during German elections campaign were triggered by poor public relations work
Fake news with a big public impact often base on incorrect or misleading public relations work. This is the result of media analyses carried out by UNICEPTA for the Foundation “Stiftung Neue Verantwortung” as part of a major fake news study on the German parliamentary elections.
Thus, the five fake news with the greatest impact (out of a total of ten cases investigated) were each based on inadequate or misleading public relations work. These included, for example, a tweet by Hamburg police during the G20 protests that a police officer had suffered an eye injury as a result of a firecracker throw, as well as a press conference by the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior on allegedly dramatically increased numbers of rapes.