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Negative Effects Of Fake News

Decent Essays

In this technologically advanced society, fake news is being widely spread across social media platforms. Since the growing popularity in obtaining news online, a large number of the public prefer to read social media news rather than authentic newspapers. It is apparent that sensational news draws more attention and interest from the audience. According to A December 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center suggests that 23 percent of U.S. adults have shared fake news, knowingly or unknowingly, with friends and others. This suggests that sufficient power is given to fake news be spread and influencing the public to some extent. Social networks could be exploited for various intentions with packaged untrue contents. The term fake news refers to inaccurate reports that are generated for gaining attention, misleading or deceiving their readers. The term social media refers to the online communications channels where information is shared. This essay will explain the negative impacts of fake news by focusing on its ability to decrease social media reliability, induce unnecessary fear and disturb political decisions.

Firstly, the social media trust is one of the negative impacts of the fake news in social media. In recent years, with the number of fake news increasing, the public trust of social media news had been decreased. Reliability in social media is lower than reliability in traditional publishers. According to Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow survey (2017), only 14

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