How do we guard against Social Media Fake News?

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Article by Chantal le Roux

We often share heart breaking stories on social media and are very opinionated on certain

content that resonates to us.

When Joost van der Westhuizen passed on, the Facebook post by Riaan Lucas quickly

spread like a wildfire and people were shocked by the content and disrespect. They were

mostly outraged and called for action on what most believe was discrimination.

Social media connects us to people we don’t personally know, what their beliefs are and

where they come from. Fake News affects people all around the world. Some would even

say that the American Presidential elections were severely affected by this. President Barack

Obama contemplated on the growing debate over fake news, warning that it could poison

politics to the point that "we won't know what we're fighting for."

In the early days before journalism and internet, false news was spread by word of mouth.

Unethical journalism existed in printed media long before the internet was invented. The

term “yellow journalism” is reporting from a standard which is devoid of morals and

professional ethics. Fake news reporting or fabricating stories have become a means to

increase profits on newspapers, magazines and online advertising and to influence public

opinion.

How many Facebook friends and Twitter followers do you have and do you know them

personally? Do you share their views and can you believe everything that is shared on this

platform?

Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are mainly used to getting out stories to

the massive audiences they have. We use these platforms to connect to family and friends.

When reading online news, the closest source is often one of our friends and because we

tend to trust our friends, our cognitive filters weaken, making a social media feed lush

ground for fake news to sneak into our consciousness. We let our guard down, because we

encounter news in our personal space.

Facebook has 1.8 billion users and is the biggest driver of traffic and are therefore also used

in making money with clickbait.

Stories that performed very well were pro-Trump and anti-Clinton, three months before the

elections, which was a crucial time. There are hundreds of websites that publish false

stories for the American voting public. People started to believe in the rumours and

conspiracy theories of both parties. The Oxford Dictionary declare “post-truth” to be the

international word of the year and is defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in

which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion

and personal belief”.

Fabricated and misinformation should be worrisome to anyone who values the truth,

regardless of their political ideology. Our brains have a finite capacity to remember and

process information. Our mind makes value judgement about what we keep and with some

articles and stories we are sometimes unable to recognize satire. Fake news causes a great

deal of confusion as we cannot detect if it is made up stories. Disinformation and

propaganda are seen to weaken democracy in countries and can also be used to inflame

“splits in society”, as seen now in the anti-Trump demonstrations held not only in America,

but also across the world.

We need to be informed about the world and we need to think critically about all important

information. Remember the email hoaxes and how we used to double check which

information received was true? When we apply critical thinking to information our goal

should be to whether we should rationally accept a story as true or reject it as false. You

should match stories against your own observations and beliefs and assess if it comes from

a credible source. A number of fact checking websites are available to debunk fake news.

Machines like robots are even being engineered with learning algorithms to filter the fake

news from legitimate articles. The programs still struggle with identifying the “type” of

misinformation present and programmers need to fine tune the “deception detector” to

increase their current success rate of 63% These programs will be very useful in sorting out

fake news from the truth as the internet becomes more flooded with information and

platforms are changing, making it accessible to more users.

We have to understand the psychology of online consumption and we have to really think

before we fall for fake news and share it. Each one of us can use “gatekeeping” as a

process through which information is sifted for dissemination, whether for publication,

broadcasting, sharing on social media, or some other form of communication.

We are influenced by what we read and perceive information differently. Have we become

lethargic in the way we recognize information?

Social media is the best way to stay informed, we just need to be alert for sites that are not

secure and that are not reputable. We can make use of the various search engines to check

if a breaking story is featured elsewhere on other well-known media channels.

Increase your mindfulness on what you spend your time on and check story facts before

clicking “hit” and “send”. Social media is expanding and worthwhile exploring! Stay

connected, but be vigilant of all the influences and how far you are prepared to make it part

of your life. Are you willing to risk your online reputation by sharing fake news?