Donald Trump has made the term “Fake News” one of the most discussed topics during the 2016 presidential campaign. At the time most people just saw it as a weapon in the fight against journalists and media. Personally, I do not agree with most of Trumps political views, nor do I like him. However, in lights of recent events fake news is something we should not write-off as political humbug.
The latest moment of horror – the shooting in Las Vegas – was again subject to several spreads of fake news. Reports that there have been several shooters or a wrong name of the shooter have made the rounds. Other reports on Facebook and Google claimed that the shooter was a Democrat and did this as an act of opposition against Trump. But do we know where this inflow of wrong information comes from?
In some cases like this one we do, however in most cases it is not exactly clear. 4Chan, a site on which everyone can anonymously post threads or articles, was the source of confusion in this occasion. According to some sources the post on 4Chan has received the legitimacy to make the rounds from Google. The article including the wrong name of the shooter has mistakenly been admitted to Google’s news page. This mistake should not have happened in today’s age of information technology, however is not the only problem.
We live in a time, in which social media channels have shaped most people to share, report and thus spread topics through a couple of clicks. Especially in the wake of a terror incident people tend to react quickly. But before Retweeting or pressing “share” on Facebook we should ask ourselves whether that is a good idea. One of the reasons for this is obviously to reduce the number of wrong reports in such incidents. However, it’s not the only argument for it. By for spreading news such as the involvement of a terrorist group in such an incident only glorifies the terrorists and spreads nothing but fear. Furthermore, we live in a time of sensationalist reporting. Everything that happens has to be turned into an enormous story or headline.
Personally, I am not a big fan of sensationalists reporting and would like to go back to an era where journalists were rewarded for honest and objective articles. So next time when you feel the urge to share a sensational headline think about it. Social Media is an enabler for spreading – whatever information it is. So at least take your time, evaluate the source and think about sharing this is really necessary.
Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/fake-news-origins-grew-2016/
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3y94z/the-vegas-shooting-generated-boatloads-of-fake-news
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/02/las-vegas-shooting-facebook-google-fake-news-shooter
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/think-tweet-wake-attack/
https://lifehacker.com/suspicious-of-fake-news-on-facebook-use-the-new-contex-1819217472
Hi Jesco,
Thanks for elaborating on this important problem.. It is of course a pity that in these times things like this happen. I was wondering, can you recommend any good sources for “unbiased” news? I have the feeling that not only mistakes happen with spreading news, but that current media are not sharing objective news..
Thanks!
Thank you for the great article, Jesco. I have followed this topic recently as well and I would like to deepen the knowledge that you provided here, since I agree with the points that you raised.
We live in a time where fake news are spreading very quickly with the help of the internet and social media. As technology will become more prevalent in our daily lives, it is hard to believe that fake news will disappear, on the contrary, they will become more frequent in the online realm. What should we do to stop their effect?In principle, the most straight-forward way to do is to teach readers to distinguish real news from fake news. This happens already in Finland, where students are taught in schools to analyse and read critically (Martinelli 2017). By doing this, they will be able to recognise reliable sources.
You may ask now, what happens when education fails to achieve that and the public is still easily influenceable by fake reports? The good news is that major Tech Companies are already working on solutions to solve this growing problem. For example, the novel initiative MITI (Moziila Information Trust Initiative) is conducting research to find a technological solution for this problem (Carey, 2017). The CIO of Mozilla, Katharina Borchert, explained that there is no unique solution that could eradicate fake news and that an open source method is most likely to encapsulate ways to solve this issue. On top of that, the Full Fact project sponsored by eBay founder,Pierre Omidyar, Wikipedia founder, Jim Wales and billionaire George Soros already provides tools to check the validity of the news, similar to the checker of Google News (Carey, 2017). Nevertheless, Facebook has a plan to solve this problem as well, by adding a “more info” button to shared articles, which would reveal the article’s source, similar articles on the same topic and a link the publisher’s Facebook page in order to help readers evaluate the validity of news in question (Wagner, 2017).
All in all I believe the perspectives are optimistic and we are close to the moment where fake news will have no effect on politics or even the degree of informedness of the masses. Do you agree?
References:
Carey, S. (2017). How Mozilla plans to combat fake news on the internet [online] Available at: https://www.techworld.com/social-media/how-mozilla-plans-combat-fake-news-on-web-3662578/ [Accessed on 22 Oct 2017]
Martinelli, M. (2017) Finland Has Figured Out How to Combat Fake News. Full Frontal Thinks The U.S. Can Follow Suit. [online] Available at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/10/12/full_frontal_investigates_finland_s_anti_fake_news_efforts_video.html [Accessed on 22 Oct 2017]
Wagner, K. (2017). Facebook’s latest idea to combat fake news is a ‘more info’ button [online] Available at: https://www.recode.net/2017/10/5/16429786/facebook-fake-news-articles-news-feed-context [Accessed on 22 Oct 2017]
Thanks for the interesting blog post Jesco. On the topic of fake news I would like to provide another example that occurred a couple of years back. The American Airlines stock plummeted by 75% after a newsletter was published through Bloomberg by an employee, who had reason to believe that the news was real. However, the news story was based on outdated facts, which led to the American Airlines increasing their stock price again. This shows that fake news can also have a substantial impact in the a stock market setting, where the information people provide has greatest impact on the value of firms.
Hi Jesco, thanks for posting about this interesting topic.
I certrainly think you have a point in saying that the influence of fake news can be an influence with very negative, potentially dangerous consequences. Especially when looking at a lens with a relatively short perspective. Because even when news stories tend to be fake, they can already have had their impact be it on public opinion or the stock market. I think this is an issue that needs to be taken very seriously as it becomes increasingly hard to distinguish fake news form news that presents the facts (due to AI, as I’ve written about in my own blog).
Because of the size of the potential problem, I think changing people’s behavior in using social media is not only very difficult but also not enough to adequately tackle the problem. Fake news stories can potentially benefit those who post them in a way that is harmful to others, so I would argue that the main responsibility for distinguishing the true from the untrue (and in extension, the sensational from the facts) lies with the news channels. I do not only think this would be more effective, but it is also more feasible since we do know the news channels (as they’re supposed to be known in order to become a popular source of information) and we do not know all the potential sources of fake news.
Please let me know how you think about this.
Hey Jesco,
Thank you for posting on a very interesting topic and sharing your opinions about Trump. I hope you are lucky enough to not have him as your president 😉
I’m curious about your opinion regarding the implications of this kind of trend. Yes ideally people will stop and think twice before sensationalizing these kinds of fake news, but in the event that this is being intentionally done, what are your suggestions for counteracting these types of tactics? Like in the American election where members of Kremlin are suspected to have purchased Facebook Advertising accounts and purposefully spread fake news in order to tamper with the results of the election, how do you suggest we go back to rewarding journalistic integrity when many of these “news articles” are in fact ads with a malicious intent to cause a reaction?
First of all, thanks you for the great blog post and for bringing this topic up, Jesco.
While I agree with you and some of the other commenters that technology needs to be part of the solution, I don’t think that it will ever be enough. A big issue with social media platforms and facebook in particular is that their business model incentivises viral and shareable content over accurate information. Real news is too boring and I doubt it could the same amount of clicks as fake news with clickbait headlines. The reason why the fake news model works for so many companies is because they generate more clicks and as click-based advertising is how Facebook and other social media platforms make money it is doubtful that technology alone is enough to solve the problem (Solon, 2017).
References:
Solon, O. (2017). Facebook won’t block fake news posts because it has no incentive, experts say. the Guardian. Retrieved 23 October 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/15/facebook-fake-news-us-election-trump-clinton