Fake News and the Search for Truth

Joe Weiner
jw441915@ohio.edu

photo from https://medium.com

Starting point

The term "fake news" has become more and more prevalent in United States media since the 2016 election. The creation, circulation, and digestion of fake news are all major concerns for U.S. policy makers. This popular Trump saying started gaining traction during the 2016 election cycle. He used it effectively to discredit legitimate news source's criticisms of him. The term "fake news" has different meanings for different people. Some might say Russian bots meddling in the election are fake news. Others might say that articles from the mainstream media are fake news. Buzzfeed figured out through analysis that fake news gained more traction on Facebook than mainstream media sources during the final three months of the election. 

How did we get here?

One of the short answers is technology. Technology is constantly moving, and we have clearly seen how hard it can be to keep up in the modern day. Social media plays a huge role. Every breathing U.S. citizen can tweet out an opinion or live tweet an event and act as a journalist to their followers. The problem is this happening on a massive scale with no accountability. People from all sides of the political spectrum cherry-pick facts for their arguments, leading to an influx of information that could reasonably be spun in either direction. This over-saturation of information makes it almost impossible to discern right and wrong. Another key part is people intentionally using these technology systems to undermine democracy. Like I mentioned earlier, this could be something like Russia creating millions of bots on Twitter and Facebook to push fake news onto our timelines. We all have an uncle or distant relative that has shared some false information about Trump on Facebook, whether it’s pro or anti. We are so eager to consume and share information that aligns with our internal biases. This challenge represents a very serious struggle we are facing today as Americans.

What can we do?

The burden falls on everybody. Journalists need to be thorough in their reporting, more so now than ever. Consumers need to take responsibility for the news they consume. As the American public, we should try to pride ourselves on being informed members of democracy. Agility actually looks at this problem as a positive opportunity. They think, from a PR standpoint, that this age of fake news calls upon actors within the industry to work with extreme caution. They argue that PR professionals will have to have conclusive evidence and research to combat movements like anti-vaccination. This modern problem will require modern solutions. It is very disheartening to see how social media has been used against the public. But that’s the way the world works now, and it pertinent that our society and legislators keep up with the times. We need to be diligent in our consumption of news and search for the truth. It can be as simple as google a headline for more context, or reporting news seems to outlandish to be real. If we want to make things better, than we all must improve.