Regan Morello
Alert.reganmorello@gmail.com
It seems like everywhere you look today you see somebody claiming "fake news." Granted, there's a lot of different sources out there, ranking from field journalism to infotainment. How are we supposed to decide what is real and what is fake? The more important question here is, what leads to fake news?
The 6 o'clock news is no longer the public's only source of television and media news today. News media has expanded across various platforms overtime since the dawn of the internet, search engines like Google, and social media platforms such as Facebook. Along with these platforms comes the ability to spread false news like wildfire, as well as the ability to impersonate professional journalists by posting your own written news.
However, the biggest issue that social media has brought into the world of journalism is advertisement. Marketing and advertisement dictate the modern journalist's agenda. Depending on what news company you write for, and who they are partnered with to display advertisements for, your writing must follow their agenda. Is there a news site you can think of that doesn't display advertisements on their site? I can personally attest to the multiple obscure advertisements I have seen, even while researching before writing this blog. Journalists have begun writing for target audiences, based on social media clicks, likes, and shares. Interaction is one of the most powerful tools in the world of journalism right now.
Not a single click, share, like, or repost goes unnoticed or unaccounted for in the world of a modern journalist. Each interaction provides vital information to keep the stories moving. With these interactions news companies are able to see the ethnicity, age, location, and other aspects of the individual interacting, and from there are able to create content that they will continue to share. Next time you see a news article being recommended to you on social media, think about prior interactions you've had with the news that has popped up on your timeline, I promise you, you'll see the connection.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because you are receiving the news you most want to hear, as well as keep up with. The issue is that the negative aspects of this are much more detrimental than the positive.
Fake news is created by false news companies, who's only agenda is to gain clicks, likes, and shares for business profit. When these companies write and post something so obscure you just have to click on it, they gain profit off of deceiving you, and in return cause the journalism communities reputation to suffer.
No comments:
Post a Comment