You’ve been conned. You believed that YouTube video you watched until someone burst your bubble and told you it was fake. Despite this, you still remember the video vividly. The wing ripped from the fuselage of the small plane. The plane death spiraling to the ground. The pilot miraculously pulling it out of the spin, righting it and landing it with one wing. The fact you remember it so clearly even though you know it is fake is important and I’ll tell you why later. For many of us, fake news is probably better known as propaganda which is essentially biased or misleading information used to promote a political cause or point of view. It is an old concept with a relatively new name only it’s ever more pervasive thanks to social media. It’s only been used in the last 18 months but the practice has been around since man first started talking. The Romans were masters at it. The ancient Greeks too. It has seriously caught on. It has greatly influenced the way media platforms operate, the public’s perception of information, and even how governments confront its proliferation. The internet radically changed the way news is published. Much like the invention of the printing press, the internet allowed more people to publish their thoughts and chipped away at the news from publishing giants.
We’ve all had that experience of coming across shared news stories with hyperbolic headlines while scrolling through our social media feeds. Some of us would click and read the accompanying article in disbelief, while others would just immediately share it around without verifying the source. Though critical readers would spend a few minutes of Google-directed due diligence to reveal a story’s veracity, by then, it may be too late — the story may have already gone viral and received millions of page views.
Fake news had always been around, but nowadays, the main differences lie in the way it's being spread and read. At present, misinformation and disinformation travel faster. For that matter of fact, any information, true or false, spread like wildfire. So, what is the difference between misinformation and disinformation? Misinformation and disinformation are both, at their core, incorrect information. However, the motivation for sharing the content and the actors who share it are very different. Misinformation sometimes refers to an “honest mistake” — for example when an article written by a generally reputable media property includes an error and it spreads organically. Disinformation, by contrast, is deliberately wrong and spread tactically. It is explicitly intended to cause confusion or to lead the target audience to believe a lie. Disinformation is a tactic in information warfare.
The effects of disinformation or fake news can be very destructive — both on a social and economical way. If even just one person would say one bad thing about a certain product, all he or she would need is another person to comment or agree and this would make it sound true for most. One of the reasons why fake news can be very convincing is that massive amounts of it could make it believable. The sheer volume of content about one specific rumor makes it even more convincing to the public eye. People could easily access tons of news and information through different media platforms through the internet. In addition to this, images are making it even more believable — the better the image, the more convincing the story is. Perception can be constantly manipulated to make it better and believable.
Fake news, or fabricated content deceptively presented as real news, has garnered a lot of interest since the U.S. presidential election. Bad information has always lived online. Before fake news, there were electronic message boards where people shared conspiracy theories and emails instructing you to FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!! Before the computer, there were anonymous pamphlets and chain letters sent through the mail. Even though the rise of fake news in recent months is undeniable, its impact is a different story. Every day, politicians overstate some statistic, distort their opponents’ positions, or simply tell out-and-out whoppers. Surrogates and pundits spread the spin. Many argued that fake news, often highly partisan, helped Donald Trump win the elections.
But what made the 2016 elections so special? In 2016, most viral lies spread on Facebook. They were reinforced by Google searches, in which stories from dubious sites jumped to the top of your screen based on traffic. The prevalence of political fact abuse – promulgated by the words of two polarizing presidential candidates and their passionate supporters – gave rise to a spreading of fake news with unprecedented impunity.
With 1.79 billion people around the world using Facebook each month, Facebook dwarfs other online platforms. Hoping to encourage people to be better informed, Facebook after the 2012 election introduced new tools explicitly aimed at helping users read news and share stories. Ironically, Facebook’s technology and good intentions fueled the rise of fake news in 2016. Bad actors created fictitious Web pages that people couldn’t resist sharing: claims that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump, or that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS, or that she helped fund ISIS. (None of those things were true.)
There was certainly evidence of fake news stories getting a lot of traction on social media, at times even outperforming actual news stories. Ignoring the facts have long been a staple of political speech. Creators of fake news found that they could capture so much interest that they could make money off it through automated advertising that rewards high traffic to their sites.
In its infancy, fake news is also used as a vehicle to spread inaccurate information, cause fear and panic, or create a mockery of significant news events, such as a celebrity’s death, a natural disaster, or elections. Since fake news has proven so effective at exploiting human curiosity, cyber-criminals have begun to use it as a phishing mechanism to deliver malware and commit other cyber-crimes.
Fake news is the boldest sign of a post-truth society. When we can’t agree on basic facts -- or even that there are such things as facts -- how do we talk to each other? It’s a media ecosystem where "everything is true and nothing is true."
For those who care about accuracy and evidence, it’s time to recognize that something really has gone off course.
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