Mahfuzul Haque

• MA in Journalism
• PhD Student at University of Maryland, College Park

This research analyzes journalists’ and audiences’ responses to a critical incident: the coverage of Kobe Bryant’s death, including whether it included accusations against Bryant, and of the Washington Post’s brief suspension of reporter Felicia Sonmez, who, at his death, retweeted an old storey about rape charges filed against Bryant. Findings are...

Fake news and misinformation spread in developing countries as fast as they do in developed countries with increasing penetration of the internet and social media. However, fighting misinformation is more difficult in developing countries where resources and necessary technologies are scarce. This study provides an understanding of the challenges v...

There has been a growing interest within CSCW community in understanding the characteristics of misinformation propagated through computational media, and the devising techniques to address the associated challenges. However, most work in this area has been concentrated on the cases in the western world leaving a major portion of this problem unadd...

There has been a growing interest within CSCW community in understanding the characteristics of misinformation propagated through computational media, and the devising techniques to address the associated challenges. However, most work in this area has been concentrated on the cases in the western world leaving a major portion of this problem unadd...

This experimental study (N = 308) examined whether informativeness of headlines affects user engagement and interactivity. Engagement was measured by offering participants 32 pairs of headlines manipulated with the amount of information and the reasons why the preferred headline was selected. To measure interactivity, participants were asked to ind...

This study employs a content analysis of 20 YouTube videos to test engagement factors using the media system dependency theory. A follow-up analysis of user comments (N=2,000) between two groups of speech and non-speech videos examines their sentiment frame distribution. Results show that speech videos had more views, comments, and dislikes, while...

Clickbait headlines are frequently used to attract readers to read articles. Although this headline type has turned out to be a technique to engage readers with misleading items, it is still unknown whether the technique can be used to attract readers to reliable pieces. This study takes the opportunity to test its efficacy to engage readers with r...

This study explores an online fact-checking community called politicalfactchecking on reddit.com that relies on crowdsourcing to find and verify check-worthy facts relating to U.S. politics. The community embodies a network journalism model in which the process of finding and verifying check-worthy facts through crowdsourcing is coordinated by a te...

This study examines the online niches of English-language newspapers in Bangladesh by analyzing stories and user engagement on the Facebook pages of five highest circulated newspapers. Based on the theory of the niche, this study analyzed data on 17,687 Facebook posts downloaded programmatically. Results indicate that users read these newspapers fo...

Fake news and misinformation spread in developing countries as fast as they do in developed countries with increasing penetration of the internet and social media. However, fighting misinformation is more difficult in developing countries where resources and necessary technologies are scarce. This study provides an understanding of the challenges v...

This study explores an online fact-checking community called politicalfactchecking on reddit.com that relies on crowdsourcing to find and verify check-worthy facts relating to U.S. politics. The community embodies a network journalism model in which the process of finding and verifying check-worthy facts through crowdsourcing is coordinated by a te...