It is wonderful to have local news always updating on Facebook, but when fake new sources are sharing information, all it takes it one person to believe it. One person will share it until there are thousands of people reading an article about something that is not real or the most common case of fake news, something that started out as true, and afterwards was twisted with fake information to make it more appealing to the reader. From a recent article, “Facebook in particular came under attack for enabling fabricated news stories to circulate unchecked.” (“'Fake News' Becomes a More Recognized Phenomenon in Wake of 2016 Presidential Election."). All these unchecked sources led to untrue stories during the 2016 Presidential election on both sides of the party. The reason that fake news is believable, as worded by Hannah E. Spratt, “Fake news creators can be highly skilled in writing stories that will appeal to personal emotions and beliefs, starting with a grain of truth and building up fake stories that reinforce their suspicions, worries, or desires.” (Spratt).
According to TIME, if you receive your information from social media, you are most likely being exposed to hoaxes, rumors, and misleading news. Previous studies have shown that false information is just as likely and fast to go viral as reliable information is (Time.com). Every person in the world has been exposed to misinformation and false accusations at a time in their life. The media, once stated before, plays a vital role in the distribution of that false information. Not every person in the world is going to tell the truth, which is very sad and concerning, although it is extremely common in the world today.
However, with the ease of access to the internet and the rise of citizen journalists and fake news sites, the public is finding more and more stories they most see shared are false. In fact, according to an analysis done by Buzzfeed News, found that false news stories were actually getting more Facebook engagement by about 100 000 engagements than the real news stories (Silverman). While one may not see this is as an immediate problem, it can have far reaching consequences when considering the function of the media. One of the media’s roles is to inform citizens of items that concern them (McNair 19). However, once the public’s trust in the fourth estate falters, this function of the media is severely impeded.
In an article written by Katie Langin, it stated that, ¨False news propagated faster and wider for all forms of news—but the problem was particularly evident for political news, the team reports today in Science, (Science).¨ The media is the outlet for false news being shared very often but with that comes the truth because in most cases the truth becomes viral and finds its ways to become exposed in the media whether it be on TV, or social media. Those in politics always have
It’s hard to decipher between the two, and people do not regularly check the facts they are contributing to daily conversations. False information creates a false reality for a majority of people. Nowadays, social media helps spread fraudulent news tremendously just by a single click. The most dangerous form of unreliable news is news that is just outright invented, especially when it is shared via social media platforms. This news is harmful because it camouflages by professional news sites, it often does not allow people to observe
We have the social media to blame for many stories that aren’t told truthfully. The sad part is that some people believe if you read it on Facebook or twitter it must be true. Every day the media is tweaking stories to make their ratings go up so more people will watch them and bring in more money. There are many stories written in print that are true from someone’s point of view but more than likely another person who witnessed or lived through the same event would tell the story with a whole different twist. A major story that was reported with misleading information was a news story over "Fukusima 50".
This was beneficial because people could check on their friends and family and know if they were okay or needed help. Unfortunately, there was no such feature on the televised news and in many cases there was no way to know where your loved ones were safe or not. To conclude, there may be fake news on social media, and it may be a rising problem, but at the end of the day, these apps end up having all of the necessary important news, and in many cases, they go above and beyond like with the case of Hurricane
Jack Mahler Mrs. Davis English 2 3/5/18 Fake News Imagine a world in which anyone can can access information instantaneously, now imagine that the people in this world that supply the information decide to use this power to spread lies faster than ever, now stop imagining because this world is actually our own. Now that the internet is more accessible than ever people are taking advantage of it to further their own agendas. A very recent example of this is pizzagate, a story about how a little pizza place in Washington DC was running a child sex ring in their basement and that the owner had a criminal record. This story was fabricated of course but the repercussions were awful. If fake news is going to continue to be a problem then we need to find a way to get people to stop people from buying into it.
For example, according to the "SocialNetWorking.procon.org" website it shares, "64% of people who use twitter for news say they have encountered something they later discovered wasn 't true. And that 16% of twitter news users say they had re tweeted or posted a tweet they later discovered to be false." Because of this, if false information is continued to be carried out onto more social media pages, the false information can turn into harmful tweets and then lead to threats and online violence. In December of 2016, a 28-year-old man was arrested after he had fired a shot in a pizza restaurant in Washington D.C. and was caused in a lot trouble all because of the false information he had
The capacity to control and stop fake news is the ability of the reader. For this reason, it is advisable to strictly ensure that the news is real before it's adopted and