For the past few years, Fake News has been coined as a term referring to the uprising of false or incorrect stories that many people believe to be true or simply refuse to believe. According to the English Dictionary, Fake News is specifically defined as "fake stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke."
Sometimes, fake news is obvious -- it's so grand and unbelievable that people laugh at the ridiculousness of it. Take The Onion, for example. The Onion is an American digital media company and news satire organization that writes and publishes various exaggerated and unexpected takes on international, national, and local news. People generally know to browse with caution and read with taking anything too seriously. It's a great form of entertainment that sheds light on some topics while also making fun of the process of sharing information itself.
Other times, however, fake news is not so obvious. In recent news, a study was brought to light by students Soroush Vosoughi, Sinan Aral, and Deb Roy, all currently attending Massachusetts Intitute of Technology (MIT). They found that false news and information is more widespread than true news -- spreading faster as well. This in itself is shocking -- how people can so easily believe what they see online and in social media.
It is, unfortunately, believable with how the majority of people nowadays are almost always connected to the internet and with each other. People are checking their feeds frequently (sometimes by the minute) in the hopes of seeing something new and exciting -- fake news tends to be more shocking and interesting than the actual facts, which is something that tends to stand out further and appeal faster towards the people quickly scrolling. Communication is easier than ever and with people's patience and attention spans getting shorter and shorter, people blow up social media and spread the problem as fast as they can.
For example, saying 267 people died during a terrorist attack garners more attention and shock value than saying 3 people died, with 264 injured -- a real life example from the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 for what seems to be one of the biggest catalysts for this uproar of fake news. The human race tends to have a morbid fascination with all things gory or all around terrible, so the occurrence of such a horrific event drew the attention of the entire world. People wanted information, and they wanted it immediately. The more outrageous the information, they greater chance it was viewed as written by someone who was already in-the-know. Twitter was one of the leading sources people flocked to to get their curiosities sated.
Vosoughi himself said that during his research,
"Twitter became our main source of news. I realized that...a good chunk of what I was reading on social media was rumors."The team of MIT students published their research with the findings showing that the truth took a whopping six times longer than falsehoods to reach a control of 1,500 users. They used intensive fact-checking and the aid of six different websites devoted to doing as such to help isolate the truth from the lies. Out of 126,00 stories retweeted by 3 million people over 4.5 million times, they discovered that fake news and information was an astonishing 70% more likely to be retweeted and viewed.
How often do you fall for fake news? Do you know how to spot the falsehoods and recognize the truths?
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