What is "Fake News?"
The term “fake news” encompasses many types of misinformation. Whether it's online, physical, disinformation, or misinformation; fake news is one of the biggest problems we are facing today.
Don’t be fooled by the media though, fake news has been around for ages. It's not just a problem in our modern era. One of the first recorded examples of fake news was in 1247 B.C., and fake news continued to surface during America’s founding, during the Victorian era, and especially during times of political strife like wars.
On this website I will explain how to tell the difference between real, fake, true, false, misinformation, and disinformation. Fake news is a problem that continues to influence many parts of the world, and if nothing is done about it, it will continue to get even worse.
How Fake News Works
Many people believe that they would be able “to see right through” things like cults, manipulative relationships, and fake news. This isn’t entirely true. While yes, some lies are easy to see through, others are not. Fake news preys on your cognitive dissonance, trust, and overconfidence in being able to spot it.
PNAS, a science newsletter, has an article discussing the link between overconfidence and falling victim to fake news. The studies showed that the more confident in their abilities to find fake news, the more likely the person was to not fact check themselves, leading to the spreading and sharing of fake news. This can be a problem for trusting people who see trusted individuals sharing fake news and not think twice about the legitimacy of what they are sharing.
Trusting individuals might also end up on fake news websites designed specifically to convince people that the website is an official newsource. Sites like “Abcnews.com.co” are purposefully misleading, and intentionally look like an actual newsource. Compare the now defunct “Abcnews.com.co” to ABC news’ official website “abcnews.go.com.” They look almost identical to one another. The same can be said for fake social media accounts. Its very easy to be misled by Tiktok and Twitter accounts claiming to act on behalf of a news site or other organization.
compare fake ABC news (top image) to the real ABC news (bottom image)
Dangers of Fake News
There can be many dangers that come with fake news. In True or False, the author mentions multiple occasions where fake news has been used to harm and oppress people, or cause general chaos.
Fake news can be used to influence discrimination against certain groups, a common trend when looking at the history of fake news. People in the past and present have often used fake news to support their agendas. Examples of this would be the letters and hysteria surrounding Jack the ripper, as well as the rumors of the Elenor clubs. Both of these stories were spread by people wanting to justify their racist or anti semitic agendas. Both of these rumors led to discrimination against marginalized communities.
Another danger that fake news can cause is faked evidence. Fake evidence like faked screenshots, fake conversations, and false allegations can lead to harm coming to people. These kinds of topics have the potential to snowball into bandwagons of people going after someone who could potentially be innocent. In order to not be swept up in the waves of hate, always do your own research and form your own opinions. If the accusations are able to be held up based on evidence you were able to find, silently block and report the accounts of the person and continue going through life as you were. Sometimes all someone is looking for is clicks and interaction. Always do your research to find if interaction is warranted or necessary at all.
Faked scientific evidence and poll results are also very important to research. If you see a statistic like “80% of doctors say vaccines are harmful to children,” you need to consider multiple things.
1: Where is this study from? If it's not from a reliable source, it is highly unlikely that the tests were done without bias.
2: How many doctors are in this study, and who are they? The source could have specifically cherry-picked 8 anti-vaxx doctors and put them with 2 regular doctors to fake the data.
3: How long ago was this study published? It could also be that you are looking at an old study that came out before modern research proved it wrong.
Of course, vaccines are very important for our health. This is a very provable fact, so the thought that 80% of doctors disagree with it should raise a lot of red flags on its own. Still, it's always good to look into the data you are consuming.
All About Bias
The most common definition of bias is “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.” Bias is a subconscious thing that manifests itself when absorbing information and the world around us. The two forms of bias that mainly relate to the topic of fake news are implicit bias and confirmation bias.
Everyone has biases whether they like it or not. Bias is a natural part of how we consume information. Implicit bias is just that, a subconscious filter that's placed over our minds. Implicit bias is formed through the life experiences one has gone through. Whether its related to where they used to live, how their parents raised them, and what media they consumed, implicit bias is in every one. This bias influences what articles you click on, how you interpret media, and how you react to news. People's implicit bias is a prime target for people wanting to cause hysteria through fake news. By confirming someone's implicit biases with misleading headings and information, fake news can easily disguise itself as real in a person’s brain. Implicit bias can be reworked, at least a little bit, through exposure and education.
Another form of bias that colors how we take in information is confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when you subconsciously or consciously choose to take in information that supports the beliefs you already have. Confirmation bias plays a big part in what news we choose to click on and where to watch it. For example, Fox News is a very right-leaning news source, so it's mainly people with the same conservative views that watch Fox News. You can also filter search results by adding more key-words to your google searches, some people do this in an effort to only see the news that they want to see. Confirmation bias is potentially easier than implicit bias for a person to overcome. You can consciously choose to listen to multiple news sources and compare what was similar and different between them.
Sources (MLA format)
“Overconfidence in News Judgments Is Associated with False News Susceptibility | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” PNAS, pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2019527118.
Fieldstadt, Elisha. “Fake news sites to watch out for.” CBS News, 2 December 2016, https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/dont-get-fooled-by-these-fake-news-sites/3/.
“Implicit bias.” American Psychological Association, https://www.apa.org/topics/implicit-bias. Accessed 14 November 2024.
Otis, Cindy L. True Or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News. Feiwel & Friends, 2020.
Smith, Fred. “The Dangers of Fake News - The Elm.” The Elm, 11 November 2020, https://elm.umaryland.edu/elm-stories/Elm-Stories-Content/The-Dangers-of-Fake-News.php.