Humans Can Decipher Fake News, but do We do it?

Luke Steiner
ls290516@ohio.edu

Photo retrieved from BBC News

Fake news. A description that is used far too often when it is refers to a journalist's work. The description has become popular because of the growing usage of social media in the world. It all started during the presidential election in 2016 when Republican nominee Donald Trump coined the term on Twitter.

Since that election, social media has become even more popular than it was then. With more usage comes more information, which makes it tough for everyone to judge whether the information is true or false. Fake news has become a bigger issue than before with the growing usage of social media because some people believe the first thing that they see. In fact, fake news on social media is so prevalent that NPR found that it actually benefitted President Trump in his election in 2016.

Some may Think it is Journalists

With more and more information available to the public, normal citizens without journalism training believe that they can report the news to the public. These "citizen journalists" are one of the big reasons why fake news continues to spread, despite everyone being on the lookout for it. The citizen journalists believe that they can accurately spread the news, but in reality, what they are posting has a chance to be inaccurate and biased. But citizen journalists are not the biggest problem, the biggest problem is us as humans.

The Real Reason

As humans, we all have a want for information. An academic study by Nieman Lab shows that there is something that is in every human called "Motivated Reasoning." Each human has a tendency to look for a conclusion that will suit some type of goal that they have. But in fact, motivated reasoning plays a smaller role than you think, it is other characteristics like these that help decipher real news from fake news:

• Political Ideology
• Receptivity to Clickbait
• Analytical Thinking

Political Ideology

Nieman Lab found a correlation between how someone in a specific political party can understand fake news. The study found that during the 2016 presidential election that it was harder for Donald Trump supporters to differentiate from real and fake news.

Receptivity to Clickbait

Clickbait is found all over social media. Another thing that researchers were able to conclude in their study was how receptive the public was to clickbait. They did this by removing the sources from articles found on Facebook. It showed that even though there were no sources, there was no difference in how many people clicked on the link. The research shows that people on social media will pay no attention to the source of information on social media. 

Analytical Thinking

The way that people think toward a news source is also a very important way to decipher real news from fake news. Researchers found that Clinton supporters used analytical thinking to believe fake news less, but Trump supporters used analytical thinking to believe real news more. How a certain person thinks does matter when deciphering if news is real or fake.

The biggest problem with fake news is not the people that write it. It is us, the people that read it.