Danielle Smith
ds006019@ohio.edu
The spread of misinformation expands every day with the current tools of social media. Some people in this digital age find themselves consuming most of their information from these sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram. The issue regarding this is that many users actively see and believe either fake news or even false sources.
A study done in 2021 by the Pew Research Center showed that 72% of Americans use social media to connect and obtain their news. Due to this fact, people must be receiving truthful news that they can trust. Without this, the spread of false news will take over the country, and the mistrust in the media, which is already substantially high, will grow even more.
One of the main leading contributors is something the internet knows as trolls. These trolls are thought of as "losers" as they spend all their time on the internet. However, these trolls affecting the media are highly trained and know exactly how to shift a story to feed into their audiences' biases. The first hide behind a fake name and profile picture to build a following base using just general information and stories before using the platform to share the information they set out to spread.
The best tool we have out to combat that is media watchdogs. Watchdogs fact-check information before and after it is released to prevent or retract false information from being out on the internet. That is so important because with how easy it has become to share posts and information, more false information has been moving at an alarming rate. As technology continues to expand, it will only get increasingly worse until all trust in the media is lost for good.
Hi Danielle,
ReplyDeleteGreat blog post! I think that you did a wonderful job in summarizing the spread of misinformation. I specifically enjoyed learning about the study you included from the Pew Research Center in 2021. To summarize, you stated that this study showed that "72% of Americans use social media to connect and obtain their news." This statistic is both a wonderful and frightening thing to reflect upon. As it is great that most have access to social media and are able to connect at speeds faster than ever before, however, it is also worrisome as this amount of people are also most likely to believe what they are reading and seeing on these platforms. Therefore, it is easy to see how misinformation can spread so quickly. For example, within our generation, I know that both my friends and I acquire most of our news from Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. A lot of times, we will hear something on one of these platforms then make sure to verify what we have heard using trusted sources such as CNN or Fox News. However, other times, when in a hurry to spread the news we have heard, we will simply believe what we have heard immediately. This is exactly how misinformation, or fake news, spreads, as in a hurry to be the communicator of said news, we oftentimes do not verify what we are spreading in the first place. In order to eliminate this misinformation, it is crucial that every media user fact-checks what they are reading or watching before doing anything else. Thanks for letting me read!