Dubai: The internet has brought us many good things — from the ‘Epic Fail Collection 2016’ to ‘What Character of Logan’ (the movie) are you’ kind of quizzes and global inter-personal communications at a level we only dreamt of years ago.
Yet, as any revolutionary social technology, it also came with a dark side: According to Pew research, almost seven out of 10 American adults say fake news stories have created great confusion regarding facts on current issues.
Twenty-three per cent said they had shared a fabricated news story.
This trend seems to be global.
Scientists in different disciplines are witnessing this phenomenon of not being able to tell what is true or false.
Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol in the UK, who studies the spread of misinformation, told the BBC: “Having a large number of people in a society who are misinformed is absolutely devastating and extremely difficult to cope with.”
A strict definition of “fake news” would be a completely fabricated and deliberately published story. But political strategy has evolved in recent times to simply discredit all stories as fake news.
On March 15, US President Donald Trump, lashed out at a major mainstream broadcaster describing it as “fake news”. Journalist Richard Gary of the BBC said: “This is an environment where the mainstream media is accused of peddling ‘fake news’ by the most powerful man in the world.”
Why is fake news created?
The answer to the question is simple: Money or hyper-partisan practices. Fake stories profit on the ability of its creators to spread it widely on social media, and that means a share of advertising revenues generated from clicks as people follow links to the websites.
The past year, a group of teenagers (some as young as 16 years) in a small Macedonian city, Veles, launched around 140 US-themed political websites, mostly fake aggressive pro-Trump content, with millions of views a month.
One of them has been reported to make around $5,000 a month. According to BuzzFeed, the young people who run these sites say they don’t care about Donald Trump. They are doing it for profit alone.
What does one believe?
Gulf News brings you a guide on how not to fall into the trap of hoaxes and fabricated news stories and highlights good practices for your social media platforms.
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