Fake News
“A type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media.”¹
With more and more scandalous stories surfacing in the entertainment industry and the constant rise of social media, it’s not a shock that among the glitz and glamour, fake news is present.
Fake news is not a stranger to being spread, either by word of mouth or through social media posts. Some of these fake news are spread by accident while some utilise this idea of ‘fake’ to create a deliberate uproar for money, and maybe even for amusement.
One thing is for sure, fake news is everywhere, and it’s probably hidden under a layer of cling film — it’s just a moment of peeling the cling film off before we realise that it’s fake, even though we probably already know that it is. But how do we determine whether one piece of news is fake? Most individuals find joy in gossiping — “There’s been some beef, so I have tea to spill!” — so how do we trek through this sea of gossip to reach the truth that no one seems to care about?
Social media acts as a catalyst to fake news — people don’t hesitate to spread false information and may not realise that what they’re spreading could cause harm.
According to news reported by the BBC Africa Eye, “false information and incendiary images on Facebook have contributed to more than a dozen recent killings in Plateau State”² — an example of how fake news affects reality and could change it for the worse.
It was apparent that a man on Facebook was spreading false information to the Nigerian people, which consisted of pictures of a baby with machete wounds that marred his head and jaw, and the skull of a man being hacked open. These were all said to be images conveying the violence within the Gashish district in the Plateau State.
However, although these images showed horrific acts of humanity, they had no correlation to the violence in the Gashish district. Whether this spreading of false information was done intentionally or not, no one knows. This man could have perceived these images to be related to the Gashish district, which could have been due to false information relayed to him. But it doesn’t change the fact that telling fake news in any form has its harmful effects.
Since these images are gruesome, they provoke an emotional response to the audience viewing them. They tug at people’s hearts, resulting in the shaking of their heads and the constant stream of “I’ve lost hope in humanity” flowing out of their mouths. In a way, the heightened emotion forces people to believe in such news without investigating it or finding out where it came from — all of their attention focuses on the images.
The origins of fake news can be dated as early as 1690 and is a good example of relaying false information deliberately:
“The first newspaper in North America got shut down in 1690 after printing fabricated information.”³
Nowadays, fabricated information usually circulates within the entertainment industry and politics. In recent news, the Independent covered a story about a man who created fake news for conservative Trump supporters. Together with his friend, Blair fabricated over-the-top news — “The more extreme we become, the more people believe it”⁴ — which evoked agreement through anger from people on Facebook as a response. Of course, Blair was right — people did believe his fake news and this caused his audience to ‘like’ and ‘share’ his posts since most didn’t recognise the satire in his words.
Blair’s page was started for amusement and even contained the words “Nothing on this page is real” as one of his fourteen disclaimers, yet all his posts are believed and are shared through his audience’s newsfeed. This indicates that, although they may know that his news are fake, they choose to ignore that and instead get trampled by their own twisted truth. In other words, how being biased can alter one’s own idea of what is true and what is fake.
When you believe in something with so much passion, even if it’s wrong, it almost seems as if the actual truth is blocked from entering your mind.
“No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back… Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realise they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”⁵
This just goes to show how most people are magnets to fake news they believe that are real. Maybe not even fake news — scandals, moments of crisis — these are all people’s main topic for gossip. It doesn’t even have to be news from the entertainment industry or from politics, it could be news within a community or within friendship groups.
Fake news spreads, and we have no way of knowing if it’s the truth, unless told otherwise.
References:
(1) ‘Fake News’. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news
(2) ‘Nigerian police say “fake news” on Facebook is killing people’. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/nigeria_fake_news
(3) ‘Fake News: An Origin Story’. Hidden Brain, NPR. https://www.npr.org/2018/06/25/623231337/fake-news-an-origin-story
(4–5) Saslow, Eli. ‘Meet the man who makes fake news for millions of conservative Trump supporters’. Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fake-news-donald-trump-facebook-last-line-of-defense-conservatives-social-media-a8639981.html
