Fake news

Fake news is everywhere in modern society. We can easily see them on the news TV channel or social media platforms that are using every day. Fake news is a dangerous source of new information for the public. While people absorb fake news, it might not only influence their recognition of specific topics but also have impacts on their ideologies. If we define the differences of fake news according to the standard which is whether the false information is malicious or not, we can have two different categories of fake news, misinformation, and disinformation. Misinformation means the contents are wrong but they are malicious. Disinformation, whereas, means the news contents are wrong and they are used as tools to hurt or specific people or distort issues. For example, if a new medium posts false information about the specific nominee in the presidential election on purpose, this fake news is disinformation. However, the term “fake news” is used by multiple politicians to target the news media which supports the opposite viewpoints with them. Therefore, the behavior itself, calling the contents from specific news media fake news, might be one kind of fake news too. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, likes to tweet on his twitter account and call the contents from specific new media the fake news only because those media usually attack him. This is another example of disinformation too. In short, our media environment of fake news and sometimes it is really hard to tell what is right and what is wrong. If we already have prejudice in our minds, we might easily be tricked by some mistakable or malicious information. Therefore, absorbing any content with an open mind and trying to keep our high knowledge to determine the truthfulness of the news is very important.