The Magnitude of Fake News

Brooke Balzano
bb240415@ohio.edu

Since the Presidential Election in 2016, fake news is something that everyone is familiar with. It is nothing more than a bogus story that gains a lot of attention from consumers who do not realize the source is entirely credible. There are many steps to take to determine whether the article is reliable or not, but not many people read beyond the headline of the article. Fake news spreads easily across all social media platforms, with some companies trying harder to stop it than others.

Both Facebook and Google have played a prominent role in the disbursement of fake news and each have taken a different approach toward stopping the spread. Google has stated that they are removing websites that produce fake news from its AdSense program in hopes to eliminate the spread of the toxic stories. Facebook followed in Google's footsteps shortly after but does not remove the stories completely.

The election was fueled by post after post containing fake news on Facebook. In the final few months leading up to Election Day, fake news stories were getting more attention than factual stories from sources like the Washington Post and the New York Times. Up until August, major news outlets were dominating the engagements on Facebook, receiving more shares, likes, comments and reactions than fake news at the time. That suddenly changed once the countdown to Election Day crept closer and closer, ultimately performing better than stories from major news outlets by over 1.3 million interactions.

Courtesy of BuzzFeed News

Each social media platform also has a different approach to how fake news is handled. A majority of Facebooks highest engagements came from stories containing fake news. Google has begun to remove unreliable websites from AdSense. Twitter has a strong end-user agreement when it comes to truth and transparency. YouTube has invested $25 million in a program with six creators to teach viewers how to spot fake news.

Although fake news is something that seems to have skyrocketed in popularity from the recent election, it is something that has been around for quite some time. It is clear that these news stories have a very strong impact on people's lives and what they believe in, but some do not realize that what is being said could also be ruining someone else's life. The stories that are written directly impact the person it is written about, whether it is a political figure or just an average human being.

On December 14, 2012, tragedy struck in my home state of Connecticut when Adam Lanza opened fire in Sandy Hook Elementary School where he shot to death 20 children and 6 teachers before taking his own life. All the local news stations were covering the event, but it wasn't until long that fake news stories were released. Soon enough, there was a photograph of a girl crying that was circulating Twitter which was familiar to an image from the Columbine school shooting in 1999.

Immediately, articles were circulating the internet saying that the Sandy Hook shooting was all a hoax and that all the parents were hired actors only pretending to mourn the loss of their child who was no older than 7 years old. As morbid as this was, people believed it and ran with it.

David Wheeler is the father of 6-year-old Benjamin Wheeler, who was killed in the massacre. In an article with BuzzFeed News, Wheeler explained that someone had created fake Twitter accounts for him and his wife and tried to prove that they were hired as actors for this massacre. Wheeler worked with Twitter to have the Twitter accounts closed down, which was easier to do than to remove the fake news from Facebook and YouTube.

Fake news is not something that should be taken lightly. It has a large impact on social media users and likely is something that will never truly end. Social media platforms must work to educate users on how to determine the credibility of the source and minimize the number of unreliable sources posted.