Fake News in the Modern Age
Although there have been many reported cases of fake news in the past, there has never been a time in history where fake news has been so rife within our everyday media. While it may not seem like a serious issue, it in fact effects every one of us greatly, by changing our attitudes and views on many issues. With such a big problem today, one may naturally ask, why is this happening? I believe that this can be explained (at least on a basic level) by some of the concepts that we learned in class.
We can begin by viewing each media outlet as a node in a media network with ties to other media outlets that they are able to observe. However, more than simply being able to observe, we can view individual ties as other media outlets with which there are shared common views. (Like liberal vs conservative media) If a news story gains traction, even from a single outlet, due to it being very attention worthy, other media outlets are likely to pick it up very quickly. We can view this as an information cascade, with a very low threshold for outlets that share the same ideals. Consider a liberal media site that publishes a false article that bashes Donald Trump, for example. Even if it is fake, other news sites that are liberal have a very low “threshold” in order for them to perpetuate this information because it already confirms their biases. It is not until it reaches the conservative cluster where the “threshold” is much higher to accept this type of news where it is finally fact checked and then perhaps later debunked. But by that time, the damage has already been done and the fact checking rarely goes as viral as the fake news itself. This can occur repeatedly many times and eventually anyone who is consuming media from only one cluster is likely to have encountered multiple fake news stories in the past, and all of these shape people’s views. It’s not just liberal media that is guilty of this- it is rather any case where there are a large number of nodes that share common views.
With this in mind, one might also ask why this is only recently a problem. This can easily be explained by the fact that in the past there weren’t nearly as many news outlets, and prior to the internet all news had to be printed so it was much more likely to be fact checked multiple times before reporting. Today, however, all it takes is a few quick clicks of a keyboard and mouse and you’re ready to go. Keeping all of this in mind, it is important to be weary of all kinds of media out there, and always draw your information from multiple sources that are as different as possible so that you can retain a grip on what is real and what is fake.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/opinion/fake-news-and-the-internet-shell-game.html