Misinformation spread through Facebook

 Rebekah Bostick

rb442218@ohio.edu

In our Ethics class, we have discussed where we get our news from and what is the difference between reliable and unreliable sources. One of the big things that you have to look out for in news from your facebook homepage (you know the articles that your grandparents or crazy aunts and uncles put up that say that vaccines are from the government that make you magnetic) and even your twitter news page, is whether the news is real news or if it's "fake news." To double check if a news story is real or not, you should look at multiple other news sources to compare the facts. If all the facts are the same, then the story is true. 

If it is in fact fake, you also need to see if it was purposefully written to look real when all of the facts are fake or if it was unintentionally incorrect. If it was unintentionally written incorrectly, then it was a mistake and one would hope that the news station would want to correct it quickly. If it was intentionally written incorrectly, that is propaganda and is used all the time by politicians and people who want to spread misinformation quickly. One of the fastest places where misinformation is spread is through facebook (think back to those crazy relatives who believe everything they read).

In this week's readings we learned about the Sandy Hook Massacre and how different far-right political radio hosts were calling it a hoax. Victims' parents were called because people like Alex Jones were saying that it did not happen, no children died and that it was propaganda for something bigger. For years, victims' parents were being called liars for saying that their children died all because someone on the radio said that the Sandy Hook massacre wasn't real. Listeners believed what they heard and verbally attacked the families, continuously sending them threats.

In 2020 when the far right mob stormed the Capitol building, far right and conservative outlets were quick to say that the rioters were actually Antifa members dressed up. They were quick to say that those involved in this storming of the Capitol were not actually pro-Trump members, but that they were liberals who wanted Trump supporters to look bad. This propaganda got spread so quickly, especially on facebook, that it took a very long time to try to convince a large sum of the American population of the truth. Some people still don't believe that the rioters were pro-Trump.

I feel like this should make everyone, not just journalists, weary of the news they consume, especially if it comes from Facebook. We need to know how to double check facts before believing the first thing that we read and how to determine if something is propaganda or an honest mistake. You can never be certain that the article that you click on is telling the truth, so you need to know how to check your sources and where you are getting the facts from.