The Rise of Citizen Journalism and Fake News
Long are the days where an audience passively consumes content whose newsworthiness is decided by editors in a far-off newsroom. In the old system, people had to adapt their lives to fit in with the news media for example making sure you will be home to watch the six o’clock news, but nowadays news media have to adapt their practises to suit consumer behaviour and digital trends, such as live tweeting, 360° video and the need for effective mobile content (for more on this check out my previous post).
The rise in digital journalism and ever-growing opportunity it affords is great but there are real life consequences that come with this new form of journalism.
Social media has undoubtedly changed the face of journalism, people on social media have the ability to shape the stories that they want to hear or see. They can also contribute to stories through live tweeting events or sharing their eyewitness account of an event which is breaking news. When a news outlet has no correspondents in that area they will often look to Twitter and other social media platforms to find eyewitness accounts which is very effective in getting news out quickly however the information people put on Twitter can not be verified quickly or even at all so sometimes ‘fake’ news can be spread.
The biggest challenge facing citizen journalism is that it isn’t subjected to the same meticulous scrutiny that a traditional piece of journalism would be, with traditional journalism it was relatively safe to assume that the information we were getting was the truth, with editors checking and re-checking for factual accuracy. The same rules don’t apply to digital or citizen journalism; there is no one out there monitoring, regulating and most importantly, fact checking. People are essentially free to publish what they want on social media even when what they publish isn’t true.
In this digital age, fake news is able to spread across the globe in minutes and before you know it, a fake story has reached millions of people who perceive it as fact. So yes, in today’s day and age, social media has afforded us with many opportunities to contribute to the world around us but just because anyone can be a journalist doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone should.
Here are 3 times fake news was spread via social media in 2017:
1. Westminster Terror Attacks, March 2017
Following the Westminster terror attack in London last year, a twitter account belonging to a Russian bot shared this image of a Muslim woman accusing her of ignoring the victims of the terror attacks. The tweet was retweeted thousands of times and featured in news reports across the world. It sparked a backlash against the woman, which only came to an end when the photographer came forward to explain that this photo had been taken out of context and that the woman was actually distraught and calling for help.
2. Fake missing from the Manchester Arena bombing, May 2017
During the immediate aftermath of the attack, people were trying to relocate their friends and members of their families who were at the concert. Many concert-goers were still missing 24 hours after the bombing so people were posting their pictures online in the hope that they would be reunited, however many of the pictures people posted were fakes.
One tweet read “My son was in the Manchester Arena today. He’s not picking up my call! Please help me” this was accompanied by a photo of a young man in a suit. The tweet was retweeted over 15,000 times but it was soon discovered to be a hoax, the man pictured was popular You-tuber behind The Report of the Week channel which boasts 22,000 subscribers.
On another list of missing people, a photograph of Jayden Parkinson, a girl murdered in 2013 circulated alongside genuine victims of the bombings. Jayden’s mother, Samantha Shrewsbury tweeted “She was killed almost four years ago not last night, not happy,” after seeing her picture published in a MailOnline article.
3. Oxford Circus false alarm, November 2017
This attack was completely fictitious. It was believed to have started after an altercation between two men at Oxford Circus underground station which led to the station being evacuated creating mass panic and causing hundreds of shoppers to run for cover. This panic led to false reports of gun shots being fired. The MailOnline tweeted a story that a van had ploughed into pedestrians, quoting an unrelated tweet from 10 days before the incident in their story. They were forced to apologise for circulating these false reports.
At the same time, Olly Murs was slammed online for tweeting to his millions of followers that he was in Selfridges on Oxford Street and had heard gunshots. As the story developed and it was revealed to be a false alarm, Piers Morgan tweeted that Olly had ‘stirred needless panic’ leading to a twitter spat between the two.
