My first personal encounter with “fake news” will probably
date me a little bit. Before internet was a mainstream think in homes we kids would
send around chain main via the postal service. We would receive a fun letter
from one of our friends threatening us with certain death or at the very least
severe illness if we did not forward the letter onto to 7 of our closest
friends. If we followed the instructions we would be blessed with our crush confessing
their love to us or even better with super athletic powers, both pretty important
things to a 10 year old boy. Of course as a 10 year old boy I was easily duped
into believing that said promises would come true dependent on the action I chose
to take and not wanting to die an early death I would promptly forward on the
messages and wait for my athletic ability to increase tenfold. It is obviously
to know either by my lack of Olympic medal or common sense that those promises
never came true. It is easy to look back as an adult and laugh at a child’s
propensity to believe something seemingly unbelievable but it is even more disheartening
as an adult to read a news story and have to wonder if you are being duped once
again.
Those
chain letters, turned into chain emails, which turned to “fake news” being
spread about social media websites. I have been on Facebook for all of a week
(I know, crazy) and I have seen multiple stories of fake news all over the site.
So what is it? How can you tell if something is a fake news or not? What can we
do to stop it? Can it even be stopped? These are all questions that any
responsible social media user should ask themselves although the term “responsible
social media user” might be a contradiction.
FactCheck.org provides a good basis for the definition of fake news and ways to
spot it. Fake news is deliberately published hoax new stories, propaganda and disinformation
that
uses social media to drive up web-traffic and/or perpetuate a certain agenda,
political or otherwise. I would say that based on that definition alone the publishing
of fake news is unethical. Over the years we have seen the influence that
social media has almost everything it touches. It has the power to make careers
overnight and it has the power to destroy them. It has the power to raise
millions of dollars for wonderful causes and it has the power to cast doubt on
the relevancy of those same causes. This effects is increased exponentially
when something goes “viral.” This is the hope for these “fake news” creators,
if a story goes viral and is shared and liked then their web traffic increases
which ultimately mean more money in their pockets. I highly doubt that thoughts
of whose career might be hurt or what damage might be done from their story
really matters to them.
The real
issue though is not the content creators though it is the content consumers.
Obviously it would be nice if those who are creating these stories just
suddenly stopped and we could go back to believing everything we read on the
internet. According to the Ethical Journalism Network “The economics of social
media favor gossip, novelty, speed and “shareability”,” which makes it the
perfect medium for fake news stories. These leave us as consumers with the responsibility
of doing a little bit of research before sharing something online. Sometimes it
is easy to spot a fake news story but most times it can be difficult especially
when one tries to base their assumptions on a summary or headline alone. FactCheck.org
suggests that you read beyond the headline since they are specifically thought up
to shock or interest the reader. Another suggestion is to check the author and
the originating website for credibility. Lastly they point out the importance
of checking your biases. I found this suggestion to be particularly interesting
considering the political climate we find ourselves in and all the news we are
hearing about fake news in politics.
FactCheck
explains that we tend to put more stock in information that confirms our
beliefs and are quicker to discount information that does not. They make the
very understandable suggestion that the next time you are appalled by a story
involving a politician you dislike to not automatically share it but to take some
time to check it out. If the story proves to be true there is nothing wrong
with sharing it on your social media as a way to express your beliefs or
thoughts but you will find that the more appalling and outlandish the story the
more likely it is to be fake new propagated for views.
I think
the real question becomes, are we as the content consumers the ones responsible
for the fact checking or is it the social media websites’ responsibility to do
that for us? In my opinion it is ultimately the responsibility of consumers. If
a person is going to have a social media account then they should be concerned about
what content they are perpetuating and should have a hand in deciding if said
content is legitimate and verifiable.
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