Transfer learning driven fake news detection and classification using large language models.
Journal:
Scientific reports
Published Date:
Aug 5, 2025
Abstract
Today, the problem of using social media to spread false information is not only widespread but also quite serious. The extensive dissemination of fake news, regardless of whether it is produced by human beings or computer programs, has a negative impact not only on society but also on individuals in terms of politics and society. Currently of social networks, the quick dissemination of news provides a challenge when it comes to establishing the reliability of the information in a satisfactory manner. Because of this, the requirement for automated technologies that can identify fake news has become of the utmost importance. Existing fake news detection methods often suffer from challenges such as limited labeled data, inability to fully capture complex linguistic nuances, and inadequate integration of different embedding techniques, which restrict their effectiveness and generalizability. In this work, we propose a novel multi-stage transfer learning framework that leverages the strengths of pre-trained large language models, particularly RoBERTa, tailored specifically for fake news detection in limited data scenarios. Unlike prior studies which primarily rely on standard fine-tuning, our approach introduces a systematic comparison of word embedding techniques such as Word2Vec and one-hot encoding, combined with a refined fine-tuning process to enhance model performance and interpretability. The experimental results on two real-world benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method achieves a significant accuracy improvement of at least 3.9% over existing state-of-the-art models, while also providing insights into the role of embedding techniques in fake news classification. To address these limitations, our approach fills the gap by combining multi-stage transfer learning with embedding comparisons and task-specific optimizations, enabling more robust and accurate detection on small datasets. Based on the findings of our experiments conducted on two datasets derived from the real world, we have determined that the transfer learning-based strategy that we have developed can outperform the most advanced approaches by a minimum of 3.9% in terms of accuracy and offering a rational explanation.
