Shelby Burton
shelbyakai@gmail.com
Fake news has been a hot button issue for years now and continues to grow as social media becomes more popular and more accessible. On top of biases and the search for objectivity, news consumers and journalists alike have had to face a seemingly uphill battle against fake news.
A gargantuan study on fake news by MIT scientists concluded that fake news stories far out-perform true new stories. Fake news stories can reach 1,500 people six times quicker than an accurate news story. And in a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, 50% of Americans considered made-up news a huge issue.
As conclusive and bleak as this information is. These studies reveal a truth about people, technology, and the future of our media literacy and this fake news crisis.
In another Pew Research Center survey from 2017 participants were asked to weigh in on our information environment. For those who aren't particularly savvy, according to a Joint Chief of Staff publication, an information environment is the people, organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or act on information.
In this survey, participants were asked whether or not they think our information environment will get better and why or why not. Although this is a simple question, the answers touched on two crucial reasons fake news proliferates today: human nature and technology. Whether participants believed the information environment will improve or not, all five of the summarized options had to do with these two topics.
This may seem obvious seeing as humans create and consume news, and technology is how we get hold of that news, but it's more than likely deeper than that.
In the same study done by MIT researchers, they theorized the reason why fake news circulates at a rate more than double factually accurate news is that fake news plays on basal human instincts. There's a reason fake news attaches itself to scandals or creates one. It's more likely to be shared. Fake news pulls on human heartstrings, eliciting strong feelings like disgust or surprise. Additionally, there's an appeal in the presentation of false news that's usually eye-catching and decidedly different than other news posts on a person's timeline.
As some participants in the 2017 Pew survey believed, humans will continue to fall for falsehoods because that's simply how human brains work. And if we were somehow able to stamp down the raging fire of fake news, new technology would be available to re-ignite the flame.
On the other hand, some participants were hopeful that new technology and public funding of objective and accurate news would create a safer information environment. They also assumed in the future people would be more privy to signs of misinformation and fake news.
Overall, it's a complicated subject. As the internet and news sources become more customizable, there's always a concern that news consumers are only paying attention to the news they want to hear. However, research done at the University of Oxford showed that online news in particular is not the "echo chamber" that many people believe it is. According to a paper written by Elizabeth Dubois whose work is on the University of Oxford website, most people have media habits that allow them to escape hearing the same opinions and news.
While this news lends toward a hopefully safer information environment, only time will tell how fake news will continue through our lives.
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