Fake News

Maire Simpson 

ms316416@ohio.edu

Fake news. Two words we hear nearly every day as journalism majors. We do everything in our power to learn as much as possible so that we can enter the workforce and address the stigma. Not every journalist goes into the field with malicious intent. In fact, very few learn the profession to create these bogus stories. Fake news stems from the desire to influence, persuade, and feed the public with inaccurate and oftentimes outlandish information to take down competing companies or political candidates. Since the takeover of social media, fake news has become even more of an issue. 

With the majority of people getting their news on some form of social media platform, citizen journalism has become more and more popular. Many of these 'journalists' use these platforms, especially Twitter, as a way to share their information without having the articles reviewed for accuracy or bias. These citizen journalists and their articles gain popularity and have gone viral with their misleading headlines. As Jesse Singal says in an article discussing the implications and dangers of citizen journalism, "there's zero incentive to fact-check, because slip-ups are forgotten so quickly, and because the members of the community spreading these falsehoods so forcefully reject - or are unfamiliar with - the values of skepticism and fact-checking." 

Illustration by: Uttam Ghosh

So why does this matter? Why are people still falling for these clickbait headlines? Shouldn't the public know when to trust an article? I mean the saying 'don't believe everything you read on the internet' is popular for the reason. The problem lies in how society curates these false narratives and makes decisions about the truth based on this social media influence. Taking these conspiracies,  spinning them to match a narrative, and making them go viral makes them incredibly appealing and believable. Renee DiResta, a computational propaganda researcher, shared on Twitter the relationship between the truth and viral content. After the 2016 debates and election, she witnessed how influential hashtags can be and came to the conclusion that anything viral becomes true. People are unable to decipher the truth when fake viral content goes mainstream. If I had a dollar for the number of times I have seen a headline from The Onion, a satirical online newspaper, go viral and understood to be true, I would have a lot of dollars. What is causing these sensationalized and hyper-exaggerated stories to make it on everyone's timeline is the fact that people also very rarely actually read the stories in entirety. Information is being produced so quickly that people read a headline, share it, and continue on with their day believing the false information and not considering the repercussions. 

We have seen that the fake news circulating during the last election received more views and clicks than any other story. Trump even began to believe that he coined the term 'fake news'.  Understanding the dynamic and society we are experiencing, it is our responsibility, especially with this upcoming election, as readers and journalists to combat this epidemic. We have to take more time to check the information we are reading and get our material from legit and trusted news sources. We have to pay attention to what we are sharing on social media. The spread of misinformation will not only damage society's perception of truth but will also jeopardize the trust of the public.