‘Fake news’. A modern trend which can have big implications. Nowadays information diffuses very rapidly over communities and opinions can therefore very easily be confirmed or strengthened. That might actually be one of the main threats of this ‘new’ phenomena.
However, new is a relative term. The first major emergence of fake news dates back to the 1930’s and is the best example of mass-hysteria, one of the potential results of fake news.
It is 1938, a war with Germany is looming and the music on the radio is interrupted for a disturbing message: there have been seen explosions on Mars and projectiles are on their way to earth. Not long after the projectiles have landed and the aliens from Mars, that were travelling in the projectiles, start taking over the world.
This was the news people received on the radio. Whilst even being announced as a fictional story and being a hear-play, somehow plenty of people believed it to be true, with all due consequences. To give an illustration of it’s impact: of the 6 million people to hear the story, 1,7 million people thought it to be true.
What does this show us? It shows us that if people expect something they will feel reinforced by certain impulses. With the looming war people were waiting for sh*t to hit the fan. Some people actually believed it to be the Germans that attacked. This is exactly why the current war on truth is such a threat. Whilst still the majority of people might be able to see the true from false there is a very big minority that will fall for the falses. And this minority can in this way influence the majority in a very significant way.
With the current targeting possibilities it is even easier to reinforce false believes. You just target those people who fall in a certain target audience and you show hem the message they want to hear, true or not. In this way it is easy to polarize and use the oldest trick in the ‘ruling’ book: divide & conquer.
It is therefore the challenge with the highest urgency for the social networks to tackle fake news and to stop this polarization. Social Media should not divide, they should bring the world together, and that is the one thing fake news absolutely isn’t doing.
