Fake News: What to watch out for

Emmeline Adkins 

 

ea10717@ohio.edu

 

 

Fake news is a recent buzzword but not a new phenomenon. During the late 19th century, you might have seen it being called "yellow journalism." The impact of the word has reached far beyond what yellow journalism back in its time did, however, with the creation of social media and new, creative places for people to pretend they have all the information that journalists do not. Fake news played a part in America's election cycle with PR Week stating, "Twitter found 36,000 Russian bots that posted 1.4 million tweets, viewed nearly 290 million times between September and November 2016." With more platforms for fake news to infiltrate and the internet creating a wider audience, the implications and consequences of fake news are becoming larger on a day-to-day basis. 

According to Shawnee State University, there are six categories of fake news: fabricated content, manipulated content, imposter content, misleading content, false context of connection, and satire and parody. 

Fabricated or false content is often not going to be the sort of news you subscribe to that is generated by professional journalists, but rather content generated by someone with no adherence to a journalistic ethics code -- like a conspiracy theory you might see on Facebook. If you do not see reputable sources cited or if the story you are seeing cannot be backed up with any concrete evidence upon a deeper search, it's likely that you're viewing fabricated content.

Manipulated content is when actual information has been distorted to be sensationalized such as "clickbait" articles are known to do. This is when the content has not been entirely made up and can be more tricky to fall for because it has the basis of facts to fall back on. If the headline of an article has a lot of triggering language or buzzwords that cause you to have a reaction before you have even read the article, you might be viewing manipulated content, and if you're really interested in the story, it's best to search for it from a more reputable news source. 

Imposter content is when actual, trustworthy sources have been impersonated, or when someone has piggybacked off of the reputation of an actual news agency. An example of this could be when 20th Century Fox and Regency Enterprises used a marketing strategy to promote their newest movie by creating fake variations of already established newspapers such as The Sacramento Dispatch, Salt Lake City Guardian, Houston Leader, New York Morning Post, and Indianapolis Gazette. Using the newspapers' marketing and reputations, they spread fake news to gather more interest in their movie.

Misleading content is when information is given in a misleading manner or when commentaries are presented as facts. Often, commentary shows such as Tucker Carlson's on Fox News is guilty of this type of fake news. When a commentary show is seen as part of a news channel it can be difficult to separate fact from opinion. While Tucker Carlson's show is very much strictly commentary, where he gives his opinion on current events and allows others in as well to discuss theirs, to the viewer, who watches him on a news channel speak in a reporter's voice and sit behind an anchorman's desk and talk about current events, it looks like a news segment. 

False context of information is similar to manipulated content and relies on a basis of factual information but shared with false context. An example of this type of fake news included Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez directly following the Democratic National Convention. At the convention, it was customary that the second place winner for the primaries still gets a short speech from their speaker of choice. As Bernie Sanders was the runner-up to Joe Biden, he chose Ocasio-Cortez to give his nomination speech. It happens during every election, and it does not mean that the speaker chosen to nominate the runner-up does not support the presidential candidate up for election. However, numerous news sites, such as NBC, posted articles with titles suggesting that Ocasio-Cortez was going against her party and would be supporting Sanders instead of Biden. Even though the articles cleared up the confusion, the headlines had already done the damage and Ocasio-Cortez was forced to take to her own social media platforms to clear everything up herself.

Picture source: Twitter

Satire and parody is the final category of fake news and while it may seem obvious that someone is making fun of something and not intentionally trying to mislead anyone, people can still be easily duped. A well-known example of this category is The Onion, which is a satire on news sources and publishes satirical pieces with the formatting of a regular news source. If you did not know The Onion was satire and took the articles as factual information, you've suffered from fake news whether that was the satirical writer's intention or not.