Fake news and Social Media

5. Methodology: Online Survey 
This chapter presents the methodology of this survey by providing information about
the strategy followed in order to collect responses form the members of the Ellinika
Hoaxes Facebook group. By explaining the way, the data presented in this study was
acquired as well as the ethical consideration arose during this process, it could be
easier to understand the findings of this research presented below. Moreover, this
chapter provides detailed information about the research sample which is the focus of
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the RQs presented above. These pieces of data are also crucial since they provide the
more specific framework of this research, which is the members of the Ellinika
Hoaxes.
5.1. Online Questionnaires 
For this study, an online survey was conducted with the participation of the members
of the Ellinika Hoaxes Facebook group. 100 members – which were chosen
randomly – of the group participated in the survey, and their responses were
collected and analyzed in order to answer the RQs of this study. The survey was
conducted online in the group with the approval of the administrators and the
members were asked to fill in a questionnaire. To be more specific, after acquiring
administrators’ approval a link with the online questionnaire was posted within the
group. A description of the survey, its purposes and its questionnaire were also
posted in the group in order to inform the users about the aims of this study and the
processes of collecting data. The survey was constructed to accept 100 participants
and therefore the first 100 members of the Ellinika Hoaxes Facebook group who
chosen to participate in this study and answer the questionnaire were automatically
accepted.
The questionnaire, with nine closed answer questions, was designed in accordance
with the focus of this study, using the online platform ‘Survey Monkey’. The first
two questions were about users’ personal information (age and gender) while the
following six were about the research itself. The final question provided the users
with the opportunity to express their thoughts about the study, as well as to include
any additional comments or ideas. Every single question was followed by a drop-
down menu of possible answers provided for the respondents, while there was also
the ‘other’ option where the users were able to give their individual answers. Based
on the given limitations of this study, 100 members of the group were preferred as
the sample of this research. This number of respondents was used for practical
reasons since it was a feasible number of respondents to be studied by one
researcher, considering the time limitations of the study as well. The participating
users were not asked to provide any information about their names (the
questionnaires were anonymous) and their participation was decided randomly, to
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ensure less bias. The participants were allowed to pick multiple answers since it was
clear that when it comes to spotting and fighting the spread of fake news, users might
have been employing various methods and combining different tools simultaneously.
Therefore, the Greek users who participated in this study provided, through their
multiples responses, more solid and accurate answers, sufficient enough to extract
common patterns in the fight against the spread of fake news on social media. As
mentioned above, the participants of this study were selected randomly to ensure less
bias and, based on their responses, 68% of them were men while 32% were women.
The 37% of the participants of this study were between the age of 35 to 44 while
32% were between the age of 25 to 34. In addition, the 15% of the participants
belonged to the age group of 45 to 54, whereas the 14% were in the age group of 18
to 24 and the 2% in the group of 55 to 64. It is crucial to mention that data (for
example percentages of men and women or age) about the overall population of this
specific group is not presented online and publicly Moreover, the group is closed,
and the administrators did not provide any further information about the member of
the Ellinika Hoaxes Facebook group. Therefore, this study uses only the data
acquired during the online research, since there was no access to any further data
about the over population of this online community. 
According to Collins (2010, p. 128) questionnaires are a popular means of collecting
data and can be used as a method in their own right. Moreover, they can be
distributed easily, and they are relatively cheap, and no prior arrangement is needed,
thus ensuring anonymity and avoiding any embarrassment for the part of the
respondent. In this case, the questionnaire was constructed based on the fact that
there was a need to collect data from many anonymous respondents from various
locations around Greece. Therefore, it was preferred as a feasible method for
collecting responses from online users and analyzing them. Questionnaires provide
standardization (Bourke et al. 2016). In addition, questionnaires not only allow
researchers to ask the same questions in the same order to all respondents but also to
easily and consistently make the tabulations and comparisons of answers.
Consequently, standardization eliminates bias and allows objective collection of
answers. That was also a strong advantage for using a questionnaire to acquire
responses from the members of the Ellinika Hoaxes group and analyze them in order
to fully understand the way users operate to identify and counter the spread of fake
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news on social media. Similarly, as Collins (2010, p. 130) states, closed questions are