Yes, You Should Be Involved with Fake News
Yes, you should be involved with fake news. Perhaps you think it’s crazy that I would even suggest such a thing. There is a good chance you may have already interacted with so-called ‘fake news’ without knowing. You may have liked a post or told a friend a shocking headline — something that turned out to be false information. Although many place the blame on news and social media outlets, individuals should be involved with fake news, and more specifically, involved with stopping the spread of fake news.
Now let’s clarify what “fake news” really is. Various online dictionaries define fake news as false or misleading information that is presented in the form of news stories. Fake news is often created or published in attempt to damage the reputation of a figure or take in revenue from the advertisements. The term was first used in the late 1800s to describe sensational newspaper reports. The term saw a rise in usage during the 2016 U.S. presidential election cycle, where fake news stories were receiving more traction and engagement than mainstream media news stories. It also saw a rise in usage in this election cycle and following from former U.S. president Donald Trump, who popularized the term to cast doubt on any negative news of himself. The term has been heavily criticized since and terms such as ‘information disorder’ have been used instead.
Claire Wardle defines seven types of fake news in her research on the topic. These include:
- Satire or parody — this type has no intention to cause harm but often has the potential to fool people
- False connection — this is an instance when headlines/visuals don’t support the content
- 3. Misleading content — this type is when an issue is framed via a misleading use of information
- False context — this type is when factual information is shared with false contextual background
- Impostor content — this type is when genuine sources are impersonated with made-up sources
- Manipulated content — this is when genuine information/images are manipulated to deceive others, oftentimes an altered photograph
- Fabricated content — this is when the content is entirely false and was designed to harm or deceive audiences
Wardle’s article about the complications of the term fake news highlights that fake news is rather different types of misinformation or disinformation. Misinformation is a term for inaccurate information that is created and spread. Misinformation is unintentionally accurate and the false information is usually due to laziness in fact-checking, bias, or an error. Disinformation is a subset of misinformation where the false information is deliberately deceptive. There is also a third type of information called mal-information that goes just beyond disinformation where it is genuine information but used in a way that is meant to harm others (think: catfishing, phising, revenge porn). These types of false information may be created for a variety of reasons. These can range from just poor journalism that creates false information, to partisanship and for political influence, to creating propaganda, to gaining profit.
Her article goes into the details of how this information spreads quickly across communication channels. It is important that we, as individuals, are making the conscious effort to understand and check the information that comes through our communication channels. Not posting an article after just reading the headline. Not liking an image without confirming a source. When the users feed into the information ecosystem, as Wardle puts it, “we’re adding to the noise and confusion.” Misinformation is harmful realms, and the negative effectives of misleading information become amplified once rapidly shared.
When fake news is rapidly spread, there can be large societal consequences that follow. One big complication that can be caused is that the publishing of fake news clouds the information atmosphere and makes it more difficult to see real news. Sometimes — as seen in presidential election cycles and during the COVID-19 pandemic — false and misleading information can undermine democratic and public health processes. The clouded info atmosphere can also lead to a lot of distrust in media overall. When consumers do not know how to decipher between factual and false media, they begin to lose trust in the media overall. This can become harmful when important, truthful things need to be shared, but people have lost trust for the media.
Research from the journal ‘The Science of Fake News’ shown that people prefer information that confirms their existing attitudes. Because of this, people are inclined to accept information that aligns with their beliefs, even if it is not true. Their desire to believe content that is aligning with their thoughts may also prevent them from going through any sort of fact-checking process. Certain studies have also shown that the repetition of misinformation increases the perception that it is true.
Centuries ago, Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza theorized that humans accept all the information that they encounter and then verify or reject it through a following process. This opposed the theory of René Descartes that claimed people only accept or reject information after considering its accuracy. In more recent times, research teams at University of Chicago and Harvard University have supported the claim made by Spinoza, in that people accept all information initially as if it were true, and later decode it to be true or false. This pattern seems to line up with alternate findings that the part of the brain that helps encode information differs from the part of the brain that is responsible for skepticism. Because humans initially perceive information as factual, it then becomes a large feat to overcome fake news and correct the falsehoods.
About half of Americans have reported getting news from social media at some times. Social media is an easy way for fake news to spread because it generally requires minimal effort, no cost, and limited regulation. But what could the platforms be doing to provide signals of the source quality of content? Some platforms, like Instagram and Twitter, have incorporated signals regarding COVID-19 information that indicate the potential falsehood of content. During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific research became a highly politicized and a divisive topic amongst social outlets. Instagram added a pop-up feature to feed and story posts with a notice stating “Visit the COVID-19 Information Center for vaccine resources” that when clicked, brings users to a page of resources on the pandemic and vaccinations. Both Twitter and Facebook put warning labels on numerous posts from Donald Trump during the 2020 election. Trump had been making claims that were giving false information on voting which both platforms said violated their previously established policies around civic integrity. The platforms did not remove the content but prevented users from most ways of engaging with it.
Many of the attempts to stop fake news on social media platforms have fallen short. One of the reasons is that social media platforms rely on engagement of users. Tech moguls — like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook — often hesitate to take action on the misinformation because of American free speech ideals. The potential for censorship — even of factually inaccurate information — has many fearing infringements on the right to free speech in our country. Most social platforms do remove hate, abuse, and glaring misinformation, but struggle with the balance between censorship and free expression. Tech giants generally try to avoid political debates on the matter unless deliberately requested to.
Additionally, even when platforms do make attempts to limit misinformation spread, they are often faced with backlash for inconsistent approaches. The 2020 election cycle saw many individuals claiming conservative censorship on major platforms. However, Twitter research teams show that content from the political right is actually more amplified than liberal-leaning content.
Large efforts to counteract misinformation spread also often fall short because it can require a lot of resources and money to combat news once it has already been circulated. The digital age has allowed the speed of information dissemination to be dramatically increased, so platforms often have difficulty blocking or censoring fake news before it becomes widespread.
Many tech companies have and are continuing to integrate algorithms that detect misinformation and so-called fake news. However, many of these automated systems are not robust to the extent that would mitigate fake news altogether. Digital literacy experts are suggesting that individuals use the SIFT methodology when giving attention to our media. That is to Stop, Investigate the Source, Find better coverage, and Trace claims to the original context. This doesn’t have to be a long process, but can take less than two minutes and could stop the spread of potentially misleading information.
Another powerful way to limit the spread of misinformation is to follow a diverse portfolio of accounts on your social media channels. If a diverse set of organizations/people are discussing a particular topic, it may be more credible than just a specific group with niche positions. A group of professors from the University of Southern California have also suggested that instead of censoring false and misleading content, a way to combat misinformation would be for platforms to limit the quantity of information that users are fed. The professors found via recent research that even when information is unbiased and factual, polarization naturally occurs from access to the sheer volume of information. They suggest an ‘information diet’ of sorts that would limit the amount of information users see at a time and help reduce the spread of misinformation.
It is important that in our ever-growing digital age, we make conscious efforts to understand and check the information that we are consuming. When going through your daily news reads be sure to use these strategies to help prevent yourself and others from spreading ‘fake news’.
- Understand the methods used to manipulate viewers — Oftentimes if a post sparked an intense emotion — anger, disgust, fear, feel-good — it may be a good time to look into verifying the content.
- Hard to believe stories are often false — if a news piece makes an extraordinary claim that seems beyond reasonable evidence, take a minute to look into the truth behind it.
- Spelling and grammar — this one may seem obvious, but posts filled with spelling and grammatical errors are oftentimes traced to unreliable sources.
- Be aware of confirmation bias — When news stories confirm strongly held beliefs of ours, we are often much more inclined to share and repost before confirming the truth. This doesn’t mean you won’t come across truthful information that you agree with, but it is important to acknowledge your biases.
- Consider the source — look for information that comes from unbiased, reliable sources. Charts like the media bias chart below can help you understand if the news sources you use are good.
- Timeline — Make sure that information you are looking at is up to date. Often times websites are not updated regularly, or old stories recirculates as new information.
I’m not saying that you can’t blame Twitter or Facebook, or whatever news-channel-you-don’t-agree-with, for also contributing to the misinformation war that we have found ourselves in. Just that everyone is interconnected to the web of digital information and it is important that we are able to see that. If we see that, there is a glimmer of hope that we can be empowered to combat the spread of fake news.
