“Contrary to the idea that social media creates a polarizing “filter bubble,” exposing people to only a narrow range of opinions, 70 percent of Millennials say that their social media feeds are comprised of diverse viewpoints evenly mixed between those similar to and different from their own. (American Press Institute, 2015, p. 3)
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
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.
A recent study conducted at Stanford found out that 82 percent of students cannot tell the difference between fake and real news (Crook). This is a major problem because it can affect people’s careers and even sway election results. Fake news occurs when hoax websites report false news. False news stories are reported every day and are being spread all over the internet. This is a huge dilemma in today’s world because “62 percent of the U.S. adults get their majority of news from social media …” (Crook). This type of news spreads so easily because people share outrageous stories without actually reading the story to realize it is false. Former president
In particular, the Web enables users to share their ideas and thoughts about politics through social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. These users can post their opinions about general politics, share articles with their followers, and write their own opinion articles. Public social networking sites cannot fact check everything their users write and cannot restrict the content their user's post. This creates a chain reaction where users continue the cycle of “see it, like it, repost it.” As a result, this lack of regulations often leads to false or misreported information to be spread and read by other people. A majority of these readers will repost anything they read that agree with their opinions. Thus, the cycle is continued. These readers are either too gullible and believe anything they read or are simply too lazy to acquire their information from credible sources and repost whatever they see.
The media has been around since the days of the printing press, to modern times where the vast network of the internet is a crucial part of everyday life. The news became popular because people want to be informed of what happens in their everyday life. Over the years, it has greatly changed and evolved. As time moved forward and technology improved, it became easier and faster to spread news and events around the world; data of information could be looked up in an instant because of innovations like computers and smartphones. Unfortunately, at the same time, it became simple to create “fake news” and manipulate the general public. Nowadays, fraudulent or flashy headlines along with false information in articles can be seen more frequently.
Each time we go to the websites we see eye-catching attention. Friends, unknown person, organizations, political associations, foundations and news sites all serve up a consistent stream of eye-getting pictures, videos, and articles. Wherever we may go searching for data on Google, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or YouTube we find these things. While advertising, not all these websites and organizations feel like they must tell the truth. We cannot always depend on social media platforms to find out the lie or untruth. This leads to fake news which is especially intended to misguide or deceive people. But, there
The ability to access credible information is paramount. No matter what time of medium a person access (radio, television, newspaper, the internet, or social media), people should take responsibility and decide how much to information to believe. For example, social media websites like Facebook influences over 400 million users a day (Peiyu & Arnott, 2013). Websites as such allows users to access others affiliated in various interest groups around the world. Some people believe that media outlets abuse and manipulate the truth to confuse active media users. Today, studies prove different approaches to decide and control how readers should process new information is as the truth.
In the first article titled, “How Social Media Is Ruining Politics” I found that one of the strongest observations made is when the author pointed out how people tend to only seek out information that they believe is right. When talking about blogs and how the internet was some years back the author mentions that people tend to seek, “information that reinforced their biases and rejecting contrary perspectives” (Carr 5). This is especially true today as a person is very unlikely to google something that contradicts what they believe. The author does a very good job at providing examples of how this is applied to social media. For example, on Twitter one can only like a tweet only reinforcing the spreading of one’s own ideas to others with similar
A large number of people potentially get some of their news from social media and this is proven by a 2016 Pew Research Center survey, which states 69 percent of US adults use social media. This also makes a lot of people vulnerable to receiving and believing false information. The authors of “Campus politics, student societies and social media” said “The very ease of access and the potential rapid and widespread ‘viral’ dissemi-nation of content led to expressions of concern that social media could amplify misinformation. ‘Facts’, it was claimed, could be misconstrued, taken out of context
People value the daily lives on social media. More than a platform that connects every individual in the social world, social media is the most powerful weapon in the political war. The finding that describes the frequency of fake news on social media has been contributed in the article “Social media and the election: Fake-news writer feels bad, pro-Trump bots, more” by Levi Sumagaysay. Sumagaysay explained that “The top-performing fake news stories had more engagement on Facebook than the top-performing real news stories in the final three months of the campaign, a BuzzFeed analysis has found. The numbers: 8,711,000 shares, reactions and comments on the fake news items, and 7,367,000 shares, reactions and comments on articles from the likes of the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News and others.” The finding indicates that the frequency of fake news in the past three month is way higher than before. More than that, there are reactions and influences of the fake
Communication today, is changing as a result of media consumption. Social media is an ever-growing and fast developing means of communication in society, and with the vast amount of new technology constantly transforming on the market, the empowered consumer is just a click away from accessing almost anything. The internet itself has opened up a new spectrum and has trained us to expect to gain information on demand at any time and from anywhere.
With the state in which our media has portrayed the definition of beauty and the wide spread of information through social platforms, we as a society have long begun to cast social pressure and shun those that does not fit the ideal image. The problem that comes with such pressure, especially within adolescents, a stage in psychology in which Erik Erikson describes as crisis during adolescence and the development of self identity (Angel Oswalt, 2010), the projection of a perfect body has lead many teenagers to develop eating disorder which according to Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD, 2012), around 95% percent with such disorders are in the ages of 12 and 25. Eating disorder is not the only problem that social media has an effect on body image, people go through extremes to achieve that ideal image, going through depression, body dysmorphic, and binge eating. Given the tremendous pressure by the society, many male and female alike feels the pressure to be at a certain shape to be part of the society. In a conducted survey of 185 students in a college setting, 58% felt pressure to be at a certain weight, 83% has dieted and 44% were at an average weight (ANAD, 2012). Bullying is a social behavior in which causes a person or group of people to harass, terrorize, intimidate or cause harm to a victim or group of victims by using superior strength and influence. With modern technology, such as computer and smartphones, being bullied are no longer confined
The effects of mass media and social media have changed the way people have experienced presidential campaigns in many ways. With the development of new technologies through the last hundred years many different ways of experiencing the campaigns have taken place. Newspapers, radio, television, internet and social media websites have changed the ways we all have experienced elections.
Social media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and many more are well used nowadays. I have found most of the news which is known to be fake are spreading hugely in social media. Recently the news was so much viral in the social media. The news was about a “Muslim migrant” who was accused of beating up a boy on crutches. This video was so much viral in the social media and the highlighted thing is the boy was claimed to be immigrant. This news was published in Netherlands where there was a big controversy in many parts of the world. But later the news was found to be fake and not convincing. Even the news broadcaster and the video poster were found to be fake for this news. The most surprising thing was that the president of United States “Donald Trump” has shared this news on a social media without knowing the point. It’s totally shocking that the person which is well reputed and known has shared the fake news without finding the truth. Because of these kinds of a crucial mistake made by such person has affected the society and the people. He mainly accused the boy as an immigrant which was totally false and unexpected. Even most of the people trust this fake news with only with the title which can bring unwanted accident. So, we can say that the people should be concerned about the news and the reality. We should have to point out whether it's fake or not instead of blaming or degrading others without real and truthful news.