Understanding Fake News
by Damon Huss
Fake news is literally a very big problem. According to the Pew Research Center in 2019, more Americans view “made-up news” as a “very big problem” for the United States than similarly view racism, illegal immigration, sexism, or terrorism as problems. But what exactly is fake news?
Here is an example. A September 2016 video on YouTube purported to be posted by “a professor at a medical school.” It claimed that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had a kind of dementia that gave her only one year to live. The video, however, was based on forged medical records “leaked” online. Within five days of its posting, the video had 300,000 views. By June 2019, it had over a million views, even though Clinton is still alive as of this writing.
Generally, the term “fake news” means intentionally fabricated news stories, like the video above. These stories are presented without any credible evidence and for the apparent purpose to misinform, mislead, or enrage people. Creators of fake news might make money by publishing stories with outrageous headlines as “clickbait” for internet users. Clicks often turn into money from advertisers on fake-news websites. But creators might also be driven by a political agenda.
Often, people will use the term to simply describe a news story from a traditional source that contains a mistake. But traditional news sources correct factual errors and have an obligation to notify readers of factual mistakes. Sometimes, too, people use the term to refer to news that seems to contradict their own point of view. President Donald Trump regularly refers to traditional news outlets, particularly CNN and the New York Times, as “fake news” in his tweets and public statements. He has even tweeted, “Any negative polls are fake news.”
Regardless of competing definitions of what fake news is, we do know what it is not. Fake news does not include satire, such as The Onion, a site that bills itself as “America’s Finest News Source.” Nonetheless, people frequently share Onion stories as if they were real, including “news” stories such as “Wolf Attacks Still Leading Cause of Death in U.S.” or “Taylor Swift Now Dating Senator Joseph McCarthy.”
Fake news also does not generally include opinion writing, such as an editorial or “commentary.” Fake news presents itself as fact. Readers should always be skeptical of opinion writers who do not refer to provably true facts in their writing. But at least such writers say they are writing opinions. Supposed news articles that do not refer to provably true facts are designed to mislead and misinform the reader.
Who Falls for Fake News?
Conservatives and liberals alike are susceptible to believing fake news. Seventeen of the 20 most-shared fake-news stories in the run-up to the November 2016 election favored Donald Trump. But since the election, many liberal critics of Trump have increasingly shared fake-news stories.
In February 2017, for example, a story on AlternativeMediaSyndicate.com claimed that police had burned down the camps of protestors against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota. Then-President-elect Trump supported the pipeline. The article showed a picture of burning tipis. Facebook users shared the article 300,000 times. But the picture was actually from a 2007 HBO movie, and the story of burning camps was false.
Many Americans seem to have lost faith in traditional news media, including newspapers, news magazines, nonpartisan polls, and broadcast television. An Axios/SurveyMonkey poll released in June 2018 revealed that 72% of adult Americans believe that “traditional major news sources report news they know to be fake, false, or purposely misleading.” About 63% of those polled believe that these sources report fake news because they “have an agenda.”
This distrust in traditional news media has a partisan edge. In Pew’s 2019 report on Americans’ views of very big problems facing their country, Republicans were found to be three times as likely as Democrats to blame journalists themselves for the creation of misinformation in the media. Both Republicans and Democrats alike, however, have a strong tendency to view politicians and their staffs as the creators of made-up news.
How Is Fake News Spread?
Bad news travels fast, the old saying goes. But fake news on social media travels even faster. The public today consumes and shares the news more and more on social media. In 2017, the Pew Research Center found that 20% of adult Americans get news from social media often. At the same time, 67% of adult Americans get at least some news from social media ― up from 44% just the year before. And according to new research, social media and fake news seem practically made for each other.
Professor Caitlin O’Connor teaches philosophy of science at University of California, Irvine, and has traced the fake-news problem to trust and the human “bias toward conformity.” In choosing what to believe, people commonly trust peer recommendations. This is true in advertising, financial advice, and news on social media. When a friend or family member shares articles or reposts a tweet, we perceive the information as coming from a reliable source. If it is, in fact, unreliable fake news, we may not realize it because of the trusted peer-source.
And O’Connor points out that it is natural for humans to want to conform, too. There is safety in conformity. But conformity has its downside. If one person in a group finds evidence that may contradict the group’s shared beliefs, that person risks being shunned by the group. If a group’s shared belief is false, all the members will share the false information with each other. And there are strong social pressures for each person not to question information.
Moreover, neither conformity nor trust in fake news is the product of lower intelligence, according to O’Connor and her fellow scholars. “It’s something that happens on the left and right,” she says, “among well-educated and poorly educated people. Our human ties and connections shape what we believe.”
Young people can be particularly susceptible. In a study by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, researchers found that students of different ages have difficulty evaluating information they encounter online. In its 2016 report, SHEG found that high school students could not explain the blue checkmark on Twitter and Facebook accounts. The checkmark signifies an account that is verified as legitimate. Over 30% of the students identified fake accounts as more trustworthy than blue-checked accounts.
In the Stanford study, over 80% of middle school students believed that advertisements designed to look like news articles but clearly labeled “sponsored content” were actually news articles. SHEG researchers found that the students simply did not know that when a post is marked “sponsored content,” that means it is paid for by advertisers hoping to persuade readers to buy something. It is not actually news.
Questions for Discussion
- What is the definition of fake news? Why would satire or editorials not be considered fake news? Why would some advertising be considered fake news?
- What are the main reasons why people believe fake news is real? Which reason do you think is the strongest, and why?
This article was originally published as part of Teach Democracy’s (formerly Constitutional Rights Foundation’s) The Challenge of Democracy, a series of texts and lesson plans made possible by a generous grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation. Click here to access these materials on the themes of Governance, Diversity, Violence, and Information.
