mt227615@ohio.edu
A Poisoned Information Ecosystem
Fake news is a hot topic of concern amongst Americans, major media news outlets and journalists due to the growing amount of people who encounter such falsified information. The presence of social media has expanded our range to communicate and share stories across multiple platforms, making it easier to become a victim of deception. The curation of diluted information and the extent of its outreach is so prevalent in today's society. Too many people struggle trying to differentiate the truth from the poisonous falsehoods they are getting fed from numerous media outlets on a daily basis.
The Effects of Misinformation
Social media users are at a high risk of falling prey to fake news and conspiracy theories. The desire for entertainment within a news story is what drives our way of thinking, where it can mask our sensibility when presented with misinformation. Facebook and YouTube are major social media platforms that are constantly put under intense scrutiny due to the amount of fake news engagement among their users. MIT performed a study that discovered how fake news is more than 70 percent more likely to be interacted with than real news stories. Task forces have been made by both platforms to squash the issue, however the growing number of people engaging with conspiracy theories and fake news is unwavering. These social media platforms are now battling between the choice of placing higher regulation on their shared content or leaving it unmoderated. Since fake news is more alive than ever, Facebook and YouTube are faced with tough circumstances. Placing higher censorship on shared content could quickly get misconstrued as an attack on our freedom of expression. It could also uproot the advancements social media platforms have made in our digital age where freedom of speech is encouraged.
Fake News in Politics
Clearly, fake news has become a coined term in today's media, but what specific event made the spread of fake news so pivotal in today's society? The 2016 presidential election sparked extreme controversy around the truth because of the amount of false news stories related to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Major news outlets outpaced the falsified information shared on Facebook until the last three months leading up to the election. The stories shared by hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs produced 8,711,000 shares, reactions and comments on Facebook. In contrast, the election stories shared by major news websites only generated 7,367,000 shares, reactions and comments. There is an alarming difference between fake news engagement and mainstream media engagement, making voting outcomes seem skewed and extremely questionable.
A chart showcasing the number of shares, reactions and comments of fake news vs. mainstream news leading up to the election. - BuzzFeed News
Moving Forward
Too many people fall prey to fake news stories because of this flourishing digital age. The spread of information can quickly get manipulated and become deceptive to its readers. I believe the engagement with fake news will finally falter once social media users learn how to distinguish the truth from ill informed news stories. It is so important that journalists continue to hold themselves to the highest standard of ethical reasoning when developing stories because you never know what falsehoods could go viral around the world.
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