It's a term we've been hearing more and more in all media. The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump made it his unofficial campaign slogan. Fake news this, fake news that. As tired as it seems, it's a term that has thoroughly made it into the zeitgeist. You've heard the term fake news, your parents have, the guy living down the street has and its not because its a catchy phrase. The term fake news has become popular because fake news is absolutely real in this day and age and has always been, but now we see what it can truly do to a society when it's been supercharged. Whether its withholding crucial information to fit a narrative, misrepresenting the facts or even outright lying, fake news has absolutely become a reality that plagues us today more than it ever has.
When Donald Trump yells out "fake news!" at one of his rallies to de-legitimize CNN or any other news organization that write something about him that he doesn't like, we all collectively groan. "Ugh, not this guy again". But I'm here to tell you, he's kinda right.
Now before you click off, hear me out here. It's rather obvious that he's throwing around the term to save his own skin. But that doesn't mean he's not kinda right as well. Fake news or simply the spread of misinformation is basically what got him elected in the first place. On one side of the fake news spectrum, you have left leaning news organizations leaning very heavily into the "Donald Trump is the evilest man to ever evil" and fill the news cycle with non stop coverage of everything he does. When the stories dry up and they have to start picking apart at the minutia of the mans every day life, you get people rightly calling it out for being ridiculous. This makes it a lot more difficult to make the average, non biased or undecided reader to believe the news when something important does come up.
However, on the other side you also have the incredibly malicious interference by Russian organizations on Facebook and Twitter. Here, fake news becomes very very useful in swinging elections.
Leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, Russian groups would purposely invade Facebook groups and use memes to stir up dissent and confusion. Memes about Trump and Hillary Clinton and even Black Lives Matter would be thrown into these discussion groups. It would work like going into a full auditorium with people that are very passionate and on opposite sides of the debate and saying the most controversial thing you possibly can and then slip behind the curtain. Imagine walking into a crowd that's half black and half white and all you say is: "so what do you think about Black Lives Matter?". Online fights would ensue in these forums and discussion groups and the ones that dropped the bomb are nowhere to be seen. This is part of the reason as to why you see such intense political polarization. But again, this is just one part of the story.
To give a little bit of incite as to what the impetus was for writing this blog, it is currently February 2nd, 2020 and we are at the beginning of the Novel Coronovirus pandemic. Or at least that's what it seems like if CNN sends push notifications every hour about the developments.
Int he case of the Wuhanese virus, it's not per-say lying, or misinformation, but the misrepresentation of a story and ensuing panic that arises from it. At this stage, we know that the Novel Coronavirus is more infectious than a certain other Coronavirus that appeared in the early 2000's, SARS. SARS however was much more deadly than the current Coronovirus outbreak but you wouldn't know that if you payed attention to the 24/7 news cycle. The constant coverage, and especially during the first months of the outbreak are doing a disservice to the public by not having all the facts straight and creating this anxiety over the entire topic. Now you have people all over the world discriminating against Asian people because of this new "Chinese" virus. There was even a tragic report of an Asian man dying in the middle of Chinatown in Sidney, Australia because the bystanders refused to give the man CPR over fears of the Coronavirus. That is tragic and shows the real world implications of how news affects us.
To focus back on the fake news aspect of this blog, I'd like shed a spotlight on one of the worst perpetrators of fake news in the modern era. The headline.
If you've ever been on Youtube, you'll know doubt have seen a video with a title so crazy, so outlandish, so unbelievable and juicy that you just had to click on it. This is what is known as clickbait. On Youtube, content creators will give their video a ridiculous headline that is just too tempting. This makes you click on it. Usually, the headline will be slightly misleading and the video itself will be much tamer than the headline and accompanying thumbnail would suggest. But you clicked the video, you watched it, maybe even an ad or two rolled by and nothing crazy happened. But, the creator made their money. Your click which was was fueled by curiosity made them their money and that's where they get you.
Over the last decade we've seen this happen a lot on social media in general and not just on Youtube. Many websites will use this ploy because it works. A website will have an article but they have to find a way to make you click because that's how they get traffic to their website that just so happens to be funded by Google ads. So they create these ridiculous headlines that can either be misrepresenting the truth, bending the truth or be an outright lie just to get the click.
But what truly makes it malicious is when the article is spread. When the link to it plastered all over Facebook or Twitter and nobody click the article but everybody reads the headline. Now you find yourself will everyone having a warped idea of what the situation is. And guess what, the crazier the headline, the more shares and retweets. Now, the entire internet knows the headline, but not the story.
So what does this all mean? Where is this headed? The main issue with fake news, is not the news itself, even though fake news in and of itself is incredibly damaging for a multitude of reasons, it is the loss of trust. If you've ever lied to your parents, the first thing they tell you is that it'll take a long time for them to trust you again. You have to work to regain that trust and even then they will always be suspicious of what you tell them. In the era of fake news, we see a loss of trust in institutions. Flat-earther's refuse to believe credible scientists. Anti-vaxxers refuse to believe doctors and the regular public refuses to believe credible news organizations. We live in an era of distrust. Some might call it skepticism, which of course is a useful tool in any setting, but distrust and the de-legitimizing of information is incredibly toxic. Everybody's news is different now, whether it comes from massive corporations of small websites putting their articles on Facebook for people to share, it all gets looked at with a distrustful eye. This makes it incredibly difficult to debate anything because now it's no longer about someone's opinion, but rather where they got the information from in the first place and it cripples arguments and possible dialogues.
And of course this will lead to an exasperation of all the issues we've already been facing such as political polarization, race relations, public policy and so on. It's a very difficult situation to out grow and it currently shows no sign of stopping.
Of course not everyone is affected by fake news. Some people refuse to only read the headline and actually dive into the article to see what they make of it. Some people will question what they see with skepticism and not distrust. A healthy way of approaching this new over saturated news world. However, these people are few and far between. We have to actually make a concerted effort to teach people how to discern real news from the salacious headline. The news machine is in full effect, it would be too difficult and also ethically questionable to police the media and journalists. But, teaching people how to treat the news they read will weed out the bad from the good and will ultimately give us a healthier and smarter culture and society.
When Donald Trump yells out "fake news!" at one of his rallies to de-legitimize CNN or any other news organization that write something about him that he doesn't like, we all collectively groan. "Ugh, not this guy again". But I'm here to tell you, he's kinda right.
Now before you click off, hear me out here. It's rather obvious that he's throwing around the term to save his own skin. But that doesn't mean he's not kinda right as well. Fake news or simply the spread of misinformation is basically what got him elected in the first place. On one side of the fake news spectrum, you have left leaning news organizations leaning very heavily into the "Donald Trump is the evilest man to ever evil" and fill the news cycle with non stop coverage of everything he does. When the stories dry up and they have to start picking apart at the minutia of the mans every day life, you get people rightly calling it out for being ridiculous. This makes it a lot more difficult to make the average, non biased or undecided reader to believe the news when something important does come up.
However, on the other side you also have the incredibly malicious interference by Russian organizations on Facebook and Twitter. Here, fake news becomes very very useful in swinging elections.
Leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, Russian groups would purposely invade Facebook groups and use memes to stir up dissent and confusion. Memes about Trump and Hillary Clinton and even Black Lives Matter would be thrown into these discussion groups. It would work like going into a full auditorium with people that are very passionate and on opposite sides of the debate and saying the most controversial thing you possibly can and then slip behind the curtain. Imagine walking into a crowd that's half black and half white and all you say is: "so what do you think about Black Lives Matter?". Online fights would ensue in these forums and discussion groups and the ones that dropped the bomb are nowhere to be seen. This is part of the reason as to why you see such intense political polarization. But again, this is just one part of the story.
To give a little bit of incite as to what the impetus was for writing this blog, it is currently February 2nd, 2020 and we are at the beginning of the Novel Coronovirus pandemic. Or at least that's what it seems like if CNN sends push notifications every hour about the developments.
Int he case of the Wuhanese virus, it's not per-say lying, or misinformation, but the misrepresentation of a story and ensuing panic that arises from it. At this stage, we know that the Novel Coronavirus is more infectious than a certain other Coronavirus that appeared in the early 2000's, SARS. SARS however was much more deadly than the current Coronovirus outbreak but you wouldn't know that if you payed attention to the 24/7 news cycle. The constant coverage, and especially during the first months of the outbreak are doing a disservice to the public by not having all the facts straight and creating this anxiety over the entire topic. Now you have people all over the world discriminating against Asian people because of this new "Chinese" virus. There was even a tragic report of an Asian man dying in the middle of Chinatown in Sidney, Australia because the bystanders refused to give the man CPR over fears of the Coronavirus. That is tragic and shows the real world implications of how news affects us.
To focus back on the fake news aspect of this blog, I'd like shed a spotlight on one of the worst perpetrators of fake news in the modern era. The headline.
If you've ever been on Youtube, you'll know doubt have seen a video with a title so crazy, so outlandish, so unbelievable and juicy that you just had to click on it. This is what is known as clickbait. On Youtube, content creators will give their video a ridiculous headline that is just too tempting. This makes you click on it. Usually, the headline will be slightly misleading and the video itself will be much tamer than the headline and accompanying thumbnail would suggest. But you clicked the video, you watched it, maybe even an ad or two rolled by and nothing crazy happened. But, the creator made their money. Your click which was was fueled by curiosity made them their money and that's where they get you.
Over the last decade we've seen this happen a lot on social media in general and not just on Youtube. Many websites will use this ploy because it works. A website will have an article but they have to find a way to make you click because that's how they get traffic to their website that just so happens to be funded by Google ads. So they create these ridiculous headlines that can either be misrepresenting the truth, bending the truth or be an outright lie just to get the click.
But what truly makes it malicious is when the article is spread. When the link to it plastered all over Facebook or Twitter and nobody click the article but everybody reads the headline. Now you find yourself will everyone having a warped idea of what the situation is. And guess what, the crazier the headline, the more shares and retweets. Now, the entire internet knows the headline, but not the story.
So what does this all mean? Where is this headed? The main issue with fake news, is not the news itself, even though fake news in and of itself is incredibly damaging for a multitude of reasons, it is the loss of trust. If you've ever lied to your parents, the first thing they tell you is that it'll take a long time for them to trust you again. You have to work to regain that trust and even then they will always be suspicious of what you tell them. In the era of fake news, we see a loss of trust in institutions. Flat-earther's refuse to believe credible scientists. Anti-vaxxers refuse to believe doctors and the regular public refuses to believe credible news organizations. We live in an era of distrust. Some might call it skepticism, which of course is a useful tool in any setting, but distrust and the de-legitimizing of information is incredibly toxic. Everybody's news is different now, whether it comes from massive corporations of small websites putting their articles on Facebook for people to share, it all gets looked at with a distrustful eye. This makes it incredibly difficult to debate anything because now it's no longer about someone's opinion, but rather where they got the information from in the first place and it cripples arguments and possible dialogues.
And of course this will lead to an exasperation of all the issues we've already been facing such as political polarization, race relations, public policy and so on. It's a very difficult situation to out grow and it currently shows no sign of stopping.
Of course not everyone is affected by fake news. Some people refuse to only read the headline and actually dive into the article to see what they make of it. Some people will question what they see with skepticism and not distrust. A healthy way of approaching this new over saturated news world. However, these people are few and far between. We have to actually make a concerted effort to teach people how to discern real news from the salacious headline. The news machine is in full effect, it would be too difficult and also ethically questionable to police the media and journalists. But, teaching people how to treat the news they read will weed out the bad from the good and will ultimately give us a healthier and smarter culture and society.
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