Untrustworthy hyperlinks on news sites are adding to the misinformation crisis

Misinformation is spreading rapidly in the digital universe, especially during election season, and the hyperlinks found on untrustworthy news sites may be partly to blame.

Jieun Shin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications Media Production, Management, and Technology Department, has been working with an interdisciplinary team to examine the patterns of embedding hyperlinks in suspicious websites. The team is conducting one of the first-ever studies about this hyperlinking behavior, which may shed new light on how false information spreads online.