Fake news in the age of Twitter

Anna Birk

ab383718@ohio.edu

Recently, in our Media Ethics and Society class, we were prompted with the question: where do we get our news from? Several intriguing table discussions ensued, but the majority said that we receive our news from sources like Twitter, Instagram or Apple News alerts. In table group one, we danced around saying outright that we flirt with the Twitter news feed and opted for saying we get the majority of our news from broadcast channels and radio shows. Finally, we landed on the idea that we use Twitter as our main news source and we all agreed: the Twitter trending page is the most easy-access way to obtain live news. From the Twitter page, users can read through live Tweets from AP, ABC, CNN and other news sources. Then, users have the option to look further into the story on their own terms. Thankfully, as students, we were able to recognize that our choices of social media platforms as our main news sources, weren't the best option as journalists. 

What about those who rely on Twitter as their sole source of news? More specifically, those who rely on the citizen journalism of Twitter for their news? 

                                         Image taken from the Pew Research Center. 

Citizen Journalism, for those who may not know, is the spreading of information online by people who are not journalists. When this information is spread, to the naked eye, it may seem like factual reporting – hence how fake news gets formed on platforms like Twitter. The line becomes further blurred when people expect actual journalists to, "fix," this fake news. According to a Pew Research Center survey in 2019, half of U.S. adults said that made-up information is a big problem, and 53% of those surveyed, think it's up to professional journalists to fix that issue. 

Furthermore, according to a study conducted by Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy and Sinan Aral, titled, "The spread of true and false news online," a false story can reach 1,500 people six times quicker than a true story does. What this proves is that false stories are more likely to go viral on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, than factually sound stories are. 

I think this should prompt us as journalists, and prompt other news consumers as well, to really consider where their news is coming from. Before retweeting and forming opinions on certain topics online, we need to dig deeper into the issue at hand, so that we are not contributing to the spread of false information.