The Effects of Misinformation in Social Media
In today’s world, misinformation has been one of the most biggest threats in social media when it comes to getting our everyday news online.
Misinformation in social media has become one of the biggest topics in recent time. The term “Fake News” quickly gained traction during the 2016 Presidential Election when President Trump called out various media sources for being fake news. Ever since then, the rise of non-trustworthy sources has quickly become the norm in today’s society. I think it’s interesting that we are just now talking about this since this issue has probably been there from the start. Crazy miss guided article names and stories that stretch the truth are what bring in the views and clicks. Journalists must do a better job in order for their work to be treated fairly and respectfully.
As you can see from the above examples, misinformation has been a huge problem in many different occasions. These tweets were successful by drawing the viewer’s attention away from the actual story and believing in something entirely different. It’s gotten to the point that even Twitter had to step in and warn users from misinformation.
Not necessarily about social media, but this shows the science behind misinformation and how it affects our everyday lives.
Some interesting and scary facts about the truth of misinformation and how some of these sources can gain traction rather than the actual real thing.
The fact that a staggering 65% of us estimate that we see misinformation in social media blows my mind. I am rather intrigued with this study and would love to dive deeper into this. I am also interested with how many non-trustworthy posts that I’ve encountered and hopefully haven’t shared with my followers.
In conclusion, my experiment and studies show a rather scary analysis of the truth of fake news in social media. The tweets weren’t necessarily fake, but it did guide viewers to a different direction than what the actual story was. I thought the video was also interesting considering it explains the effects of misinformation in our brains and how we react to it. The statistics were intriguing since it shows how much attention a fake news story can attract rather than the actual thing. I am pretty grateful for learning about this topic and hopefully I can apply the knowledge that I learned and take it for my future endeavors.
