To understand what fake news is the first and most important thing to understand is the concept of fake new and false information. They may sound the same but in reality are not. Fake news is patently false, and usually has some kind of intention behind it, this is usually done by an individual with some purpose. False information usually has no malicious intent behind it, rather it seems to stem from misunderstanding of a source. In terms of destructive capability, however fake news far surpasses false information in that regard, the purpose of fake news is to evoke strong emotions, or have the audience react in a way that is favourable to them . In this blog post we hope to educate people about fake news and raise awareness to this issue.
Why is fake news generated?
There are many reasons why Fake news is generated. Fake news is generated because people want to take revenge about something or on someone. Sometimes people also make fake news for political reasons. Fake news is usually generated because of money, people can get money by making fake news and people Well people are also greedy for money too. So there are many reasons too but some are for good reason and most of them are for bad reasons.Recently a site named NPC News published the following story:
How is fake news generated?
People generate fake news by making it up and sending it as real news. But people do not do that often because it takes too much time and effort and they want it to be as simple and cheap as possible to make the most profit. Instead, they steal fake news from other people and post it on the internet as their real news that they found out.
How is fake news spread?
More often than not, fake news is spread through social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. Social media users ¨like¨ a certain post that may contain fake news. Many people might find it interesting with or without knowing that it is in fact false. These apps have a certain algorithm, liking and sharing just triggers the algorithm so that it reaches more social media users. False news doesn’t only spread through social media though. False news could have also been spread by mishearing or misunderstanding things, clickbaited from a certain website that wants to make money, people who design a news report by biasing one person from a certain incident or even misunderstanding a joke and taking it as a fact. This just goes to show the different ways to how misinformation can spread.
Why is fake news spread?
On social media, when people usually look at posts with disinformation in them, they are usually encouraged to like and share by the person who posted it. Individuals do so, without giving it a thought. When someone looks at a post and shares it with their friend or ¨likes¨ it, they usually don’t ponder on it for a while. Again, the more individuals like the post, the algorithm gets triggered and it pushes the post toward other individuals. The person who posted the post might also use persuasive and influential language to get the viewer to ¨like¨ and share it. If I had to summarize the answer of this question, I´d say false information spreads because of the persuasive language that the person uses and the thoughtlessness of social media users.
Fake news stems from a variety of different sources, and it is imperative to raise awareness to this issue in order to halt its spread. For this to happen everyone needs to be cautious and look out, not only for themselves but also so that they don’t end up as a way for fake news to spread. Next time you read news that may be questionable just keep an eye out!
Websites we used as our sources of evidence.
https://www.cits.ucsb.edu/fake-news/where
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zcr8r2p
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239666
https://www.webwise.ie/teachers/what-is-fake-news/