Misinformation and Fake News in the Age of Social Media
Misinformation is never just about information. As defined in academia, the term misinformation refers to information that is presented with the potential to mislead its readers. Distorted visualizations, a quote taken out of context, even graph-and-text misalignment — with simple manipulations of the arrangements of facts, even the most neutral information can power a biased narrative and present a fabricated impression.
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As pointed out by the BBC, in practice the term misinformation is used widely as “an umbrella term to describe false, misleading or out-of-context material regardless of the motivation behind it. It can also be described as bad information.” The focus of the term hinges on the verb “misinform,” which ties together related terms like misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. Anything that misleads us is considered misinformation, and we are constantly exposed to it in our everyday lives.
More than ever, the responsibility to distinguish fake news from the real is placed on individuals, as the power of sharing information is taken from traditional news outlets and distributed among everyday people via social media.
What goes into the creation and spread of fake news?
Fake news is often created with the original intent to benefit. The creation and sharing of misinformation can simply stem from one’s intention to socialize with, help, or benefit from others. In a case study on the motives behind fake news conducted on the political situation in Hong Kong, Au, Ho, and Chiu found that it is common for the fabricators of fake news to create misinformation due to either political or financial motives.
Misinformation can manifest in many ways. Even when the information presented is discretely correct, selectively exposing and reporting the information can leave an impression that twists its original intent, as in the case of the following election:
“For example, in the 2016 Hong Kong Legislature Election, a few pro-democracy candidates openly suspended its electioneering in the hope of helping their allies just before the polling day. Despite its importance, the [website of TVB, the leading public news outlet] did not report their actions. The editorial decisions of TVB News were suspected to be in favour of the pro-Beijing camp, given the head of TVB news was a senior executive of, and has been closed with a flagship pro-Beijing political party in Hong Kong (Kwong 2015).”
Other tactics that go into the fabrication of misinformation, especially fake news, can be the authors’ making unfair comparisons with factual information, mixing facts with fabricated information, creating a false sense of urgency and fear, and manipulating the emotional responses of audiences.
Because misinformation can lurk underneath truth and influence people’s emotional reactions, it is also possible for individuals to share misinformation with good intentions or out of distress. Therefore, everyone can be susceptible to consuming and spreading misinformation without our knowledge.
Why Should We Care?
Why does all this matter? It might seem at first glance that one small piece of fake news can only affect a proportionately small part of our lives. Nevertheless, many small pieces of misinformation can add up and impact our overall attitudes, changing their direction and pushing our behaviour and beliefs to the extreme.
Fig. from Au, Ho, & Chiu, 2021
In the previously mentioned study, the scholars investigated the impact of political misinformation on the general public. They found that such fake news can further polarize the already existing splits in public opinion with regards to political events in Hong Kong. A recent study published by the American Psychological Association also found that Americans will share fake news and misinformation, passing such information to their friends and family or sharing them on social media platforms for the purpose of conforming with their social and political groups.
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As people’s opinions and attitudes become more and more polarized, social phenomenons like confirmation bias and tribalism will play a more and more dominant role in people’s making decisions about what information to consume and believe. It will be hard for a voice presenting relatively neutral opinions to survive and be heard, and occurrences of conversations between people with different opinions will be less and less likely to occur.
Another study done on the impact of misinformation is related to the domain of public health. A study done by Loomba and colleagues identified that consuming misinformation online regarding Covid-19 and vaccinations reduced people’s willingness to be vaccinated against the virus in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Misinformation, in the context of public health, can hinder people from accessing the health resources that are available and necessary for the health of their own and that of others.
Even though pressing the “share” button can sometimes feel like a small action, the impact of the information we share and the audience it can potentially reach can be beyond our imagination.
Combating Misinformation Online
Being exposed to misinformation online, especially on social media platforms, is almost inevitable. Nevertheless, there are measures that we can take to counter and stop the spread of fake news and misinformation.
- Method #1: Address the Content Itself
To address the content of the misinformation directly, individuals and platforms can implement fact-checking, propose warning labels before the text, and correct misinformation once it is spotted. The platforms and the government can also implement policies against misinformation and fake news. For example, taking down or suspending an account for spreading misinformation and disabling the “repost” and “share” feature on the said piece of information.
- Method #2: Address the Source of the Content
Many pieces of misinformation are authored based solely on opinions or distortions of facts. With the correct tools to trace back to the information’s source, it can be easy for individuals to judge the source’s credibility and therefore decide whether to believe the information.
- Method #3: Addressing the Spread of Misinformation
The best way to combat misinformation is, of course, for people to know how to identify misinformation. Providing the public the necessary tools to distinguish misinformation from factual information is an essential part of preventing the spread of misinformation overall. It is also important for individuals to take up the responsibility of clarifying once a piece of information is found false and prevent others from continuing its spread. Literacy against misinformation is thus fundamental and crucial.
In conclusion, although the spread of misinformation is more prevalent than ever, given the convenience of social media platforms, completely arresting its influence is not impossible. With patience and practice, we can strive to make our online experience informative and inclusive rather than harmful to our mentality and our health.
References:
Lawson, M. A., Anand, S., & Kakkar, H. (2023). Tribalism and tribulations: The social costs of not sharing fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. doi:10.1037/xge0001374
Chen, S., Xiao, L., & Kumar, A. (2023). Spread of misinformation on social media: What contributes to it and how to Combat it. Computers in Human Behavior, 141. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2022.107643
Kong, H., Liu, Z., & Karahalios, K. (2019). Trust and recall of information across varying degrees of title-visualization misalignment. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/3290605.3300576
Loomba, S., De Figueiredo, A., Piatek, S. J., De Graaf, K., & Larson, H. J. (2021). Measuring the impact of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on vaccination intent in the UK and USA. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(3), 337–348. doi:10.1038/s41562–021–01056–1
Au, C. H., Ho, K. K., & Chiu, D. K. (2021). The role of online misinformation and fake news in ideological polarization: Barriers, catalysts, and implications. Information Systems Frontiers, 24(4), 1331–1354. doi:10.1007/s10796–021–10133–9
The world of misinformation and fake news is full of confusing vocabulary — beyond fake news (no date) BBC News. BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/beyondfakenews/fakenewsdefinitions (Accessed: March 21, 2023).
