Fake News on Social Media
Social Media in modern society has replaced traditional media with the indispensable emergence of digital technology. It has been used to spread fake news quickly since everyone has access to any of the social media platforms globally. Social media users react to fake news as fantastic and implausible stories. Social media has been used to manipulate and spread fake messages across various social media networks. However, web developers are in a position to curb the spread of fake news and propaganda. Propaganda and fake news have been around for centuries; however, the introduction and continued use of social media has accelerated the rate at which fake news is spread and the way propaganda is used to manipulate public opinion.
The use of social media to spread fake news and propaganda has proved to be effective since it reaches a wide audience, the goal of spreading fake news can be criminal or even political. 62% of adults depend on social media to get news about politics, entertainment, and any other activity around the globe (Gottfried & Shearer, 2017). Therefore, when social media misleads its followers, the whole world will become part of the lies and suppositions from a specific user or web developer. It is an issue that is taken lightly by a good number of people in society, but its effects are far-reaching than people expect. An example of the far-reaching effects of fake news is the catastrophic effects fake news and propaganda had on the 2016 presidential elections, prior to the election fake news was spread by bloggers and this affected the outcome of the election (Allcott &Gentzkow, 2017). Fake news spread through social media was responsible for changing people’s opinion thus influencing and changing the course of a national-wide activity.
Advancement in technology left some loopholes where people manipulate it for their benefit. However, Artificial Intelligence (IT) could be introduced to review news articles to detect false information in them. People will not need to conduct more research to find out whether the news is credible or not. Such programs could be used to minimize the spread of fake news over social media. Therefore, the issue of spreading fake news on social media could be curbed by such a measure. The efforts that are being made by programmers and web developers to curb the spread of fake news cannot be disregarded. Major social media sites to include Facebook and Twitter are using their users to stop the spread of fake news (Kim, et al., 2018). Whenever users are exposed to news they think is fake, they have a choice to flag the news as fake, and when the news gathers enough flags form multiple users to prove that its misinformation then the information is taken down reducing the number of people who view the information.
Arguably, social media could be used positively, like in marketing, raising social awareness, and learning about different business ideas from different parts of the world. People can learn these from social media, but there are more authentic sources with such information. Such activities, too, are prone to fabrication or exaggeration. Therefore, Social Media causes more harm than good in society, especially on dispensing news. Moderators of different social media platforms should pay more attention to information being spread. They should Artificial Intelligence and other digital methods to mitigate fake issues on social media.
Conclusively, web developers and internet users have a role to play in alleviating fake news on social media. The spread of fake news back in 2016, affected the Presidential Elections. 62% of adults rely on social media for news, thus living a lie and getting wrong perceptions about different things in society. Such a population reading information online that is not true is dangerous; some of them make decisions in their lives that they hardly get out. Opinions about different things may change, but realizing that it was altered by fake news makes an individual feel duped. The information is distributing over social media should be observed keenly to reduce false news to negligible levels.
Reference
“Allcott, H & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211”. This article provides information regarding the 2016 presidential election and how fake news on social media played a major role.
“Fake News on Social Media. (2019). In Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale”
“Shephard, Alex. "YouTube's Fake News Problem Isn't Going Away." Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2020. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints”
Gottfried, J., & Shearer, E. (2017, December 27). News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016. Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project. https://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/
Kim, J., Tabibian, B., Oh, A., Schölkopf, B., & Gomez-Rodriguez, M. (2018, February). Leveraging the crowd to detect and reduce the spread of fake news and misinformation. In Proceedings of the Eleventh ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (pp. 324-332).
