False Information on Social Media
Basically every breaking news story is shown on TV and social media. For the most part, the story is 100% factual, but sometimes, news organizations attempt to be the first to break a story, and parts of the story turn out not to be true. These inaccurate stories circulate on Twitter and other major social media platforms very quickly, and after just a couple minutes, that story could have thousands of views, leading many people to believe the wrong thing. This is why staying patient and making sure all the facts are correct before breaking a story are essential to journalists and the people reading the stories.
Here is an example of how false information spreads extremely quickly. We all know now that nine people were killed in the helicopter crash, but false reports stating that only 4 people were on board were spread on Twitter. These false reports even got the president to tweet about the situation.
In this tweet, the person is referring to the Parkland school shooting from two years ago. News was spreading quickly that the suspect was still at large because of what ABC News was tweeting, but some people were quick to call them out for spreading false information.
This is a short video that shows that it really isn’t that difficult to spot fake news on social media. Spotting false information can potentially stop it from spreading to hundreds or thousands of other people.
This is a great infographic that outlines the different types of fake news on social media. A lot of the time, the fake news is for laughs, but often too many times it is real, and a situation can become worse with the spread of wrong info.
These were the victims killed in the helicopter crash, but most reports were stating no where close to 9 people were killed. Some reports were stating the Kobe’s daughter Gigi was not on board, and some were reporting that only 2–3 were on board. TMZ is also known to have not informed the families about the crash before breaking the story.
A lot of people on Twitter are quick to recognize fake news, and they also are quick to thank people who help expose it. In this example, the account is happy with the job that Damian Collins did with exposing fake stats about coronavirus. This is a very difficult time, and exposing false information is critical in helping the world become normal once again.
This is a funny TikTok video that shows news anchors talking about fake news and the dangers of it.
All in all, social media plays a major role in the spread of false information. If one person thinks something is true and tweets about it, then someone else is bound to think it is true as well. This is how the information spreads so quickly. We need to be more careful when it comes to identifying fake news, and we need to ensure that we are not the ones spreading it.