Political Analyst: People in Bulgaria are not Familiar with the Term "Fake News"

Sofia. People are not familiar with the term "fake news" and there is not enough talk about it, Political analyst Parvan Simeonov, CEO of Gallup International, (not related to Gallup, Inc.), told Focus News Agency. According to him, when people hear about "fake news", they think of all news that they do not believe or do not want to believe, they rather reflect on whether we can trust the information or not. "Our data from the latest survey of Gallup International on fake news scared me a little, as 34% of the people claimed that only the last week of July they came across some news that they thought was fake. These 34% are equivalent to over 1,800 million adult Bulgarians," Simeonov said. According to him, this is a very big share, and fake news needs to be talked about as it will become an increasingly common phenomenon. "Untrue news is the reverse of media democratisation," Simeonov said. According to him, when everyone can disseminate information, especially in social networks, be influential, when not so much the truth but the likes received become a criterion, then there is no authority that can tell us what is true and what is worth it. "In this way, fake news is spread easily. That is the big problem we are going to face, and I think, we'll talk about it more and more often," he said.