5/09/17 What is causing the increase in the spread of misinformation? DejaNae Phillips

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What is Causing the Increase in the Spread of Misinformation?

By: DejaNae Phillips posted on May 09, 2017, at 8:13am

Full Bio: DejaNae Phillips is a first year college student at San Diego State University. She is enrolled in a RWS 200 course where she has learned different aspects about fake news. Ms. Phillips has reviewed many other authors and has examined their claims on what they believe cause the spread of fake news. In her article she will present her own claims on why she believes fake news is spreading and present evidence and examples she finds from reliable on-line sources.

The proliferation of fake news is concerning many parents, political leaders and teachers. When misinformation is spread, children, teens and even adults form misinformed opinions about things that could be detrimental to their lives. How? Well, just recently during the 2016 election, there were a lot of stories about the presidential candidates that were not true. When people see these stories on social media, they tend to believe them which leads to them voting for a certain candidate based off of a fake news story. This is just a very small part and I will go into more detail later in the article. The concerned parents, teachers and political leaders are all trying to find solutions on how to stop fake news from spreading or at least informing people on how to differentiate between real and fake news. But, it is important to know the causes before figuring out solutions in order to find solutions that are most efficient. The causes of fake news are: Social Media, Partisanship and (this one is hard to believe…) humans (yes, us!)

It’s right at our fingertips!

The increase in the use of technology and social media is directly proportional to the increase in the spread of fake news. Smart phones that have Twitter, Facebook and even Google give readers easy access to false news stories.

Having access to fake news at our fingertips, makes it that much easier to spread. With the simple click of a button fake stories are dispersed all over the internet.

For example, Huzlers.com, a website known for posting fabricated news stories, recently posted one about the infamous “Cash me outside” girl, Danielle Bregoli. They said that she was being arrested for prostitution. From Huzlers.com, it went to Twitter and Facebook where it got over 90,000 shares and comments. Although some may realize right away that the story is not true, others may not. When fake stories are shared, reputations could be ruined and feelings could get hurt. The same day “Trending Hoax News” posted about Ms. Bregoli, she tweeted “I do support anti-bullying but I can’t bite my

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5/09/17 What is causing the increase in the spread of misinformation? DejaNae Phillips

tongue all day every day when thousands of people just talk ----.” Craig Silverman, a BuzzFeed News Media Editor, wrote an article about this fake news story. He had an interview with Pablo Reyes, the

person who runs Huzlers.com, and Reyes said “Whenever we put something on Huzlers and we throw it up on a couple [Facebook pages] it tends to just blow up”. In other words, when stories are put on social media, if it catches people’s attention, whether true or fake, it ends up being shared. While fake news sites may be the source, social media sites make it easier for the false stories to be disseminated.

Not everyone agrees that social media is related to the increase of fake news including creator of Facebook, Mark Zukerberg. During the 2016 election, many people were blaming Facebook for playing a role in influencing the election. Not only did Zuckerberg say that was a crazy idea, but he also mentioned that Facebook employees do their “best to make it so that people can report that, and as I said before, we can show people the most meaningful content we can”. While that may be true, even though Facebook gives people the ability to report fake news stories, that does not stop it from spreading. Facebook also does not sift through every story and get rid of the false ones. While that may sound insane and hard to do, it is necessary.

Filtering social media will be difficult, but I do believe it is possible. Although technology is advancing and will continue to advance, I believe we should be using that to our advantage.

For now, the best way to keep fake stories from spreading is to have educated professionals researching news stories that are popular and figuring out if they are real or not. By doing that, they can post the reasons for a story being fake such as the resources used and other things. These professionals will be the people who help us internet users from differentiating real and fake news stories that are hard to tell apart.

Hopefully in the future, the internet will do it automatically!

Low bar Easy Why is it a problem now? If phones have been around for so long

The photo to the left is of “Trending Hoax News” sharing the story about 13 year-old Danielle Bregoli on February 24, 2017. The photo above is a screenshot of Bregoli’s twitter responding to the stories and hateful comments made toward her not just from this fake news stories but others.

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5/09/17 What is causing the increase in the spread of misinformation? DejaNae Phillips

Partisanship: Were you on Facebook during the last Election?

People put out stories that either debunk a candidate or make their candidate sound better in order to gain votes.

Pope story Jerry-mandering

Maybe it’s just us?

Unaware of what is fake or not Social roles are changing Demographic

Wait, so why is this important?

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