Now more than ever, there are a lot of divisions in every society on what is called “facts”. Whether we are talking about political news, medical reports even celebrity updates, it’s all questioned by the way social media makes it easy to share information leading to mass disinformation. According to Centre for research, there are reports conducted in 2019 pointing out to a “significant real-world harms arising from the spread of false information”.
So how does it happen? are we talking about some actors in the social media that are manipulating the information for their own personal gain? Well, I thought that this was the case at first. It turns out that there are two techniques that help spread the wrong information.
The first technique is intentional and we have seen it happen a lot. For example, in the US presidential elections in 2020, Forbs describes what happen saying “The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020, was the direct result of a continuous drumbeat of disinformation starting before the Presidential elections”. The go on saying that they set up “The Big Lie” which is a technique often using in persuasion that happens when the lie is repeated many time.
The second technique is the organic reach through the social media. It was shocking to find out that “relatively few people (maybe less than 10% of social media users) actively share false material they encounter online.” This means that most of the wrong information is shared through family and friends who saw the fake news and believed it. Even interacting with sure posts with an honest “like” can create an organic boost to this fake post.
It’s very important to validate the information and consider the source. It’s very easy to be fooled by visual elements that would give the information some undeserved credibility. There are also several techniques like faking an official name and creating memes that is originally based on a lie. All of these are attempts to build a large follower base with the help of spreading fake news.
I believe that spotting fake information is a must have skill that should be trained to all the students in school. Children from a young age must have the basic knowledge on how to spot fake accounts and information. I also wish that social media platforms would own this problem and would create a way to spread the awareness among its users. For example, they can create mandatory tutorials and after all, this would be for the individual as well as the whole society’s safety.
Sources and attribution:
Forbs, Disinformation Propelled By Social Media And Conspiracy Theories Led To Insurrection, Jan 19, 2021
Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, Why Do People Share Disinformation On Social Media?, Sep 4, 2020
https://crestresearch.ac.uk/resources/disinformation-on-social-media/
