With this research project I would like to widen my knowledge of the American presidential election and the affects social media and fake news had on influencing the final result of Donald Trump becoming President in 2016.
The aim of the project is to achieve a better understanding of the extent of which Facebook, Twitter and online news influenced young voters and their vote on the election. Furthermore, I wish to achieve an answer as to whether Donald Trump would have won if fake news hadn’t influenced young voters. In order to accomplish my aims, I will thoroughly researched sources, such as news articles, books, academic journals and YouTube videos in order to conclude an answer to whether fake news on social media influenced the 2016 US presidential election.
Background and significance of the project:
The problem I intend to solve is that social media sites, such as Facebook, and fake news are influencing voters falsely and therefore are affecting the final result of elections, such as the 2016 US presidential election. Individuals on social media are reading false stories about Trump or Clinton that they believe and repost or spread. This fake news can be confused with real news, which can lead to voters being ill-informed by this confusion and therefore their votes are wrongly influenced by dishonest news stories. Such stores can affect the final decision of an election, meaning that a candidate can either win or lose on false information spread by social media channels.
My solution to this problem is split three different aspects. For my solution to work; individuals must be more aware of false stories on the internet, social media companies must filter fake news and aid in the extinction of it, and finally departments such as the FBI need to play a large role in suing sites or individuals that spread false information as real news in order to make money. If all three aspects of my solution are achieved then the problem of fake news affecting future elections will hopefully be reduced or solved.
Individuals must not believe everything they read and need to be educated on recognising fake news in order to reduce the spread of it. More so, individuals need to question the credibility of sources before they repost or retweet it on social media so that the problem of ill-formed votes is reduced. Social media companies need to ‘let users report fake news articles, which independent fact-checking groups could then review’ (Titcomb & Carson, 2017). This will not necessarily solve the problem but will definitely reduce it, meaning that less deceitful stories are on the internet being read, believed and reposted. The FBI or departments with equal authority must sue or shut down individuals and companies that post these false stories online if they do so then the problem becomes reduced and fake news will have less of an impact on peoples’ lives.
The question I want to explore in my research is did the media and fake news influence voters on the United States presidential election of 2016, and if so did it affect the final outcome. This question is very significant and relevant today. Social media has never had such an impact on presidential elections before. Social media, such as Facebook, launched in 2004 and Twitter in, 2006, means that it’s a new phenomena and even newer is the idea of news being presented on these social networking sites.
Therefore the question I want to explore and research is both interesting and important as it holds relevance in today’s cyber-influenced world. Furthermore, if fake news did have enough of an impact to affect the final result of the 2016 election, then false information has caused Donald Trump to become the world’s most powerful leader. This creates a massive relevance for my question to be researched, as it is not acceptable for false news to impact future elections. We cannot let ill-informed voters sway results, especially in the US presidential election as whoever wins becomes the most powerful person in the world.
Project Design – literature review:
Social media sites, such as Facebook, have been accused of influencing Donald Trump's 2016 election win. In an online journal article ‘Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election’ by Allcott and Gentzkow, evidence is given as to why fake news on social media sites impacted the election and influenced voters, leading to Trump’s win. The article suggests that by factoring all the evidence together, some would believe that without fake news Donald Trump would not have been elected President. The evidence shows that 62% of US adults receive their news on social media and many people who read fake news stories admit that they believe what they read. Fake news stories found and shared on Facebook were more prevalent than in any other popular mainstream news story, and the most considered fake news stories favoured Trump over Clinton. This article helps exemplify the problem of false information being spread on social media and argues strongly for Facebook’s fake news stories having an impact on the US election results.
Whereas, in an article written by Esther Zuckerman, titled ‘Mark Zuckerberg claims Facebook didn’t impact the election’, the opposite is argued. Zuckerman explains how Mark Zuckerberg denies Facebook’s involvement in swinging the US election. In countering the argument of Facebook ‘swinging the election’, Mark Zuckerberg said “I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, of which it’s a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea.” He goes on to argue that his web site is not the problem and in fact people vote on who they want based on their lived experience. Therefore he disagrees with my solution to the problem and advises to not tackle false information but suggests getting people to engage in a wide variety of news sources so they can make a considered opinion.
In a YouTube video, posted by CBS News, Facebook’s power and influence on the US election is reviewed. Facebook has been said to be a ‘breeding ground for misinformation’ during the presidential election period, where people would share fake news stories in order to sway people’s opinions on either Trump or Clinton. Facebook has an enormous amount of power. It’s worth half a trillion dollars and has more than 2 billion monthly active users, which makes it the most influential media organisation of all time. Considering these facts, Facebook is a dangerous platform for false information being shared worldwide and implies that it could easily have had an impact on voters and their vote in the 2016 US presidential election.
The Guardian posted an article titled ‘Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?’ by Olivia Solon. The article explains how fake news helped Trump get elected and how easy it was to spread false news via Facebook. According to the article there’s a lag of around 13 hours between the publication of a false report and any subsequent debunking. That leaves enough time for hundreds of thousands of people to read and share the information before it’s either taken down or branded as fake. Furthermore, the article explains how people are more prone to accept false information and ignore dissenting information, meaning people are very accepting of what they read and what they want to hear. Even more so, approximately 340,000 extra voters turned up to vote in the 2010 US congressional elections due to a single election-day Facebook message according to a study published in Nature. This fact, exemplifies the power that Facebook has on society and therefore the potential it had on affecting the 2016 US presidential election.
Similarly to the YouTube video, an article from the Telegraph ‘Fake news: What exactly is it – and can it really swing an election?’ by James Titcomb and James Carson, said “last year's US election has been seen as providing a fertile breeding ground for fake news”