How Fake News Goes Viral
This article explores the ways in which information spreads across networks through our digital world. Specifically, a false tweet about paid protestors being bussed to demonstrations against Donald Trump eventually reached over thousands of Americans. The situation was misinterpreted by Eric Tucker, who tweeted a picture of a coach bus in Texas, informing his 40 something followers of what he believed to be protesters on a coach bus. Despite the information being false, it managed to be shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and more than 350,000 times on Facebook. Ultimately, this occurrence illustrates the manifestation of the fake news phenomenon.
The spread of this news first started after being posted to Reddit, which has a large user base. Its spread was further perpetuated given the nature of Reddit, which contains links to various discussion forums. This ultimately caused the cascade of information, in which this false news began to cascade through the world wide web. After gaining much attention, a few journalists contacted the coach bus company to uncover the story. The coach bus employee remarked that only two people bothered calling to fact check the information. This simple and easy task would have prevented this spread of false news. This demonstrates our reliance and trust in others, which can evidently have damaging effects.
Our understanding of networks and information cascade can explain this phenomenon. In today’s world, political views have been increasingly more and more publicized. We see that imitation typically occurs from drawing rational inferences from our limited information. In this case, the picture of the charter bus was enough of a warrant for the news to be spread across to thousands. As more and more people continue to share news, people in their networks are convinced it is rational to do the same. Further, sharing this information indicates that people are informed of the political world, which encourages people to share this news to their own personal network. These explanations can be used to understand the emergence of this phenomenon.
Eventually, the story was debunked and the original tweet was removed. This situation sheds light on the incredible trust we hold for the news we are confronted with. It also demonstrates the meaningful power of online networks in spreading information, both fact and fiction. It will be interesting to explore the ways in which news will be regulated in the future to prevent similar situations from progressing.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html?_r=0