Fake News and its effects on society Structure Define fake news Its occurrences and how it effects things Why it’s dangerous and potentially harmful What people can do to identify and negate the threat Conclude – summarise what has been discussed Effect on society & people’s personal view on the world The definition of fake news has changed significantly in recent years. X defined it as (definition) but in more recent years it’s meaning has pivoted, perhaps most widespread by the 2016 US general election; it now applies to hoaxes and misinformation, aimed to mislead (says who?) more of which will be discussed later in this work. Use and effects of fake news in society Fake news has become a topic of increased debate since the 2016 US …show more content…
This has been later amended to include sharing responsibly on social media. Gatekeeping and the role of a journalist in society Filter bubble Google personalised search changes how people see the world, creating a filter bubble. Filter bubbles create a ‘bubble’ of news that aligns with an individual’s views, which can be dangerous and misleading Companies including Facebook and Google have created personalisation filters for individuals to show them more of what they’re interested in, inadvertently hiding opposing socio-political viewpoints. Pariser (2011, 15) describes personalisation filters or ‘filter bubbles’ as “a kind of invisible autopropaganda”. This can have negative effects on learning and creativity particularly, where all information is familiar and nothing can challenge our pre-existing ideas. Tan (2017, 3) extends on this, adding that users can be subject to confirmation bias, wherein their worldviews take precedence over hard facts. Marchi (2012, 256) disputes this claim, arguing that social media exposes users to a diversity of opinion from other users. Censoring of news on certain sites and media groups with agendas What can be done? Facebook, twitter, social media (Wikipedia uses humans to validate information vs a crappy algorithm) Scientists suggest that we expose people to small amounts like a vaccine New Facebook algorithm detects fake news Fact checking sites such as Politifact and Snopes have shown promise in
One of the several political issues America faces today is fake news. Any person can go on the news and will see numerous articles stating how President Trump makes accusations that the news is fake (or at least most of it is). In Macbeth, there are Weird Sisters, and they can be compared to fake
“Fake news,” like Pravda during Soviet Russia times, was used in the election to deliberately sway the political views of the voters and increase the support of one party’s side. During the election, “phony articles concerning candidates…emerged…this fake news boosted the image of…Donald Trump…” (“Fake News”). "Phony articles” or “fake news” on social media affected the candidates’ images, thus making voters more likely to vote for one candidate over the other. “Fake news” can be dangerous in spreading unreliable information and planting false accusations about a candidate in the minds of the voters. In 2016, a fake news story was leaked about Hillary Clinton that led to a shooting in a pizzeria,“Incidents such as this demonstrate how potentially dangerous fake news can be and how difficult it is to distinguish…”(“Fake News”). “Fake news” can cause people to abandon their initial beliefs about a person, like a political candidate, and align with the opposing side, destroying a person’s career over counterfeit media. "Fake news” is propaganda used to change people’s way of thinking, like both Pravda and Squealer’s role on The Farm. All of these methods of propaganda were substantial resources in changing people’s minds and feeding thoughts into their minds. They can be dangerous if they are not identified as being false or exaggerated, and can
“I am not going to give you a question. You are fake news.” This is the now infamous response from President Donald Trump during his first press conference since taking office when asked “Sir, can you give us a chance to ask a question?” by CNN reporter Jim Acosta (Johnson, 2017). President Trump’s dismissal of Accosta sparked the colloquial usage of the term “fake news,” a phrase the current president uses to lambaste media sources who report stories that do not present a favorable impression of his presidency. However, true “fake news,” has existed for far longer than Donald Trump’s presidency and includes three main types: satire, biased reporting, and deliberate misinformation. Fake news has grown in quantity and now Americans across the country are expressing concerns about not being able to trust media sources once considered honest and reputable, along with having trouble distinguishing between real and fake news.
Fake new became a popular topic in news regarding politically aligned news channels and outlets. For example, YourNewsWire is an online news outlet based in Los Angeles. Based on this website, Hillary Clinton’s victory in the popular vote was due to voter fraud of 25 million votes (Kosoff). YourNewsWire used evidence of an investigation the NPR, National Public Radio, conducted. Though the article’s claim of voter fraud seemed compelling, as evidence was to support the argument was supple. Yet the evidence was incorrectly used. The NPR was involved in this investigation of voter fraud, but only published the information as Pew Research Center conducted the analysis of credibility. Another piece of falsified data is that the investigation was not conducted as a means to discredit Hillary Clinton’s victory in the popular vote, as the investigation was completed in 2012, prior to Clinton and Trump’s campaign for office. This is only one example of skewed stories and biased articles. The creators of YourNewsWire, Sean Adl-tabatabai and husband, Sinclair Treadway, were politically aligned with Bernie Sanders for the 2016 election (Baum). The reputation that YourNewsWire has created for itself has plummeted. Google no longer supports this website with ad-sponsored money, and other accredited websites, such as Snopes, investigate the validity of news articles such as these and discredit their findings
Out of the variety of news sources such as TV, radio, or newspapers, one of the popular sources in today’s world is social media. People are getting addicted to and can’t live without social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. They use social media as of where they can post their status but also where they can receive a lot of different news. While social media are spreading any kinds of news such as trend, celebrity or even politics, people easily get the information that is not true called “fake news.” The fake news raises the major problem in social media as the news source. Once people see the news, they tend to believe and share it. Liking can spread out fake news in a second. When people like the news, the activity
On the internet there are hundreds of thousands of different news articles, but not all of them are real. Fake news is a type of hoax or deliberate misinformation that you can find almost anywhere mostly because of social networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and News Feed.
After watching the Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubble” he explains how we get trapped in a “filter bubble” but not getting exposed to the information that could widen our worldview. He also goes on to talk about how we are not in unity like we think because we live in our own personal bubbles through or on the internet, but we do not get to pick what all goes into our bubble. I agree with that but the people to blame is the ones who withholds the information we need to challenge us and the things that get edited out. Even though our bubbles consist of who we are and what we do, it’s not fair because we have no control over what gets put into our bubbles or what get left out. The ESPN article also ties in with the filter bubble as well.
Thesis: Dissemination of news through social media allows for rapid distribution and incredible accessibility, but can lead to decreased understanding, stifled discussion, and even the propagation of fake news stories.
Facebook is starting to “crack down” on fake news articles throughout the social media website. However, Katrina Trinko says, Facebook’s fact-checkers have a liberal bias. Trinko believes that many of the fake articles on Facebook are withholding information that is containing the whole truth. She believes that these “fact-checkers” are more likely to crack down on conservative views instead of the liberal views. (Katrina Trinko Facebook fact-checkers have a liberal bias) Facebook like other social media sites, have been accused of posting fake articles across their website. According to the PEW research center, sixty-seven percent of Americans rely on social media for their news coverage (News use across social media platforms 2016: Jeffrey Gottfried and Elisa Sherer). While social media has been known to show “fake news”, this has a huge impact on the influence of the viewers (mostly being American teenagers). Whenever there has been fake news across Facebook, there are circumstances where the fake news will be shared. Although the person who shares the fake news may not realize that it is fake, the news is being shared causing people to believe that it is true. Facebook is reaching out to the conservative political action conference who are questioning the potential for bias news articles. Facebook was censoring stories about conservative topics back in spring of 2016. Now, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is investigating and Facebook moved its automate to the trending news section. Facebook is working to ensure that the
The Comet Ping Pong story, and the even more disturbing news of the Kremlin’s role in our election, merely underscore fake news’s rapid ascent from an amorphous notion to perhaps the most significant digital epidemic facing the media, government, and, at the risk of sounding mildly hysterical, democracy itself. One Pakistani military offender, confused by a fake-news story, raised the prospect of a nuclear war with Israel. (Recall that Michael Flynn Jr., the son of Trump’s national security adviser, shared the Comet Ping Pong story on Twitter.) Meanwhile, our current president spent virtually his entire campaign inventing or proliferating fabricated stories such as his suggestion that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the plot to assassinate
Propaganda is most commonly associated with World War II, yet in our modern day society, we are still inundated with many forms of propaganda, both directly and indirectly. With current events such as the controversial election of President Donald Trump, propaganda has once again moved to the forefront of people’s minds, with an influx of ‘fake news’ and scandalous stories on an almost daily basis, as a consequence of the rise of social media.
In conclusion, when the internet was created it was at seen as a way to finally stop gatekeepers who withheld vital information, such as the Church or the Associated Press. However, overtime “filter bubbles” have developed on online media platforms. These filter bubbles have become the new gatekeepers of information because they dictate the content a user receives based on what the internet believes they want. These filter bubbles exist in many different forms from suggested videos on YouTube, to recommended trends on Twitter, to endorsed products on Amazon. These sites are popular, and used frequently, which makes it clear that a large portion of the content our society consumes is heavily tailored. This can negatively affect society because
When using the internet, people generally get a very personalized experience. Most social media sources and search engines track users’ product usage, and utilize algorithms to give users personalized content. This personalized content, content that the user would wishes to come into contact with, causes the user to use the product more, giving technology companies more money. However, when people only come in contact with content they’d necessarily like,they are not made aware of others’ views and end up being encased in their own filter bubble. The filter bubble causes a harmful effect that stop people from being able to take part in community dialogue.
As the world evolves and changes due to the explosion of technology, so does mankind's ways of intellectual comprehension of informative news. The present day of news has overemphasized the meaning of fake news; which represents any form of false information that is illustrated as factual news. That tends to spread throughout the internet and the media. Misinformed news has taken over the world in so many ways, such as the birth of satirical and sketchy news, the financial motivation to publish actual false news, and difficult to sustain news.
The recent surge in popularity of social media comes with a price: fake news. Fake news is defined as news or media that has been altered or modified. Journalists have begun to analyze why that fake news exists and why it continues exist. Two authors, Eoin O’Carroll and Kevin D. Williamson, both have written articles about fake news. Eoin O’Carroll’s article “How Information Overload Helps Spread Fake News,” discusses how the media has bombarded us with news stories, blurring the distinct lines between real and fake news. Kevin D. Williamson, a journalist for the National Review, writes in his article “‘Fake News, Media and Voters: Shared Reality Must Be Acknowledged” that the news is not fake; it just does not align with one’s personal beliefs. Both authors successfully appeal to their audiences’ emotions and feelings, but O’Carroll is more likely to succeed than Williamson in persuading his audience to try and combat fake news because the writer presents himself as someone the intended readers will more readily identify with and offers evidence that his readers will find more compelling.