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In an age where social media has impacted nearly all aspects of life around the world, reading a newspaper seems to be a thing of the past. Today, as the world grows increasingly electronically dependent, society has access to volumes of information–previously unimaginable. This evolution does not just stem from search engines, but to news outlets and social media platforms–but quality is certainly not quantity. Now there are various forms of ‘Fake News’ that have important consequences for influencing sensitive information on important issues. As technology evolves, the way we interact with information also changes by way of increasing our access to both the creation and understanding of information. This leads to the emergence of a simultaneous challenge, of how to sort through this new transformative kind of ‘newspaper’, of online and social media

 

One of these examples stems from the conflict in Qatar and other Arabic countries. In this instance, online accounts were created to plant suggestive information, un-substantiated claims, and fraudulent videos to influence public opinion and swing the media in their favor. This article uses this example to exemplify the effects of this phenomenon on international conflict, but the effects do not end there. The 2016 presidential election tells a similar cautionary tail, as Russia’s intervention into American politics was channeled through the use of widespread social media platforms, such as Facebook. Another popular platform for sharing information has run into an abundance of legal and operative problems, Wikipedia, as it excepts anonymous contributions to help ‘author’ the pages. These instances call into question the validity of the interactions with the people within our networks, and how to filter information in this new age–both throughout social media platforms and in the spread of information.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45372272

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