شادی خدایاری

Fake news is false or misleading information that is published as

news and can influence public opinion. This type of information is mostly produced and disseminated in times of crisis. In some cases, fake news can be designed to manipulate everything from stock markets to political opinions and important decisions. This type of news has become a powerful tool in global campaigns that are used in elections, economics and geopolitical conflicts. Social media, especially in today's era when everyone has access to the Internet much easier than before, is a space for disseminating false information and fake news. In this study, the researcher seeks to identify the challenges that this category of news creates for public relations. Fake news is considered as an important organizational issue that needs to be monitored and managed by public relations agents. In other words, the main goal of the research is to identify the challenges of fake news for public relations and ways to deal with it. To achieve this goal, the questionnaire made by the researcher based on the level and intensity of importance, is adjusted and placed at the disposal of public relations managers in public and private organizations. The main research question is what are the challenges of fake news for public relations and how to deal with it? The statistical population of the research is all the public relations managers of public and private organizations, whose samples are selected by targeted non-probability sampling method. Analysis of findings is also done using    software. To identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of this issue, the researcher uses the SWOT analysis method. SWAT analysis states that in order to face the challenges of fake news in the organization and identify ways to deal with it, internal and external factors should be considered at the same time. Internal factors refer to the characteristics that are under the control of the organization, but external factors examine the aspects outside the control of the organization. Finally, after identifying different strategies, the SWOT matrix is drawn and the optimal model is presented to identify the challenges of fake news for public relations and ways to deal with it.