Detecting fake news involves analyzing a distribution of publishers who publish many news articles, analyzing a distribution of various topics relating to the published news articles, analyzing a social media context relating to the published news articles, and detecting fake news articles among the news articles based on the analysis of the distribution of publishers, the analysis of the distribution of the various topics, and the analysis of the social media context. Detecting fake news alternatively involves receiving online news articles including both fake online news articles and real online news articles, creating a hierarchical macro-level propagation network of the fake online news and real online news articles, the hierarchical macro-level propagation network comprising news nodes, social media post nodes, and social media repost nodes, creating a hierarchical micro-level propagation network of the fake online news and real online news articles, the hierarchical micro-level propagation network comprising reply nodes, analyzing structural and temporal features of the hierarchical macro-level propagation network, analyzing structural, temporal, and linguistic features of the hierarchical micro-level propagation network, and identifying fake news among the online news articles based on the analysis of the structural and temporal features of the hierarchical macro-level propagation network and the analysis of the structural, temporal, and linguistic features of the hierarchical micro-level propagation network.