Fake news, as a term, really took off after the 2016 US Presidential election. 

Fake news is essentially false information being shared with the intention of convincing others that it is true, and counting on them to spread it on in their circles. 

Ben Thompson has a really insightful article on understanding fake news, misinformation and information on the Internet in general (I have taken the above graph from his article).

The graph above stood out to me as it can serve as a quick rule of thumb for when to watch out for fake news. 

When the amount of public interest on the topic is high, then we need to be wary of fake news as the originators of such misinformation have more to gain and are likely to invest more time and effort in propagating fake news. 

In thee current scenario of an incredible amount of interest globally in the developments around Coronavirus, be wary of the sources where you get your information from.