The Internet and social media has become a great way for people to get news, but it has also become a way for rumors, scams, and false political stories to spread. These things have all become classified as ‘fake news.’ Fake news started with the internet, and it has evolved through social media to become a real problem. People are being tricked by fake news into giving up personal information or being led to believe in false rumors about people or politics. Fake news has become such a ubiquitous idea that even the President of the United States has started calling entire news companies ‘fake news.’ This trend of calling entire news outlets fake has made it difficult to understand what is truly made-up news, and what is news that simply stretches the truth for their own benefit or to support a political side. Fake news has become a 21st century threat because of how it can falsely influence people to support one side of an argument.
So, what is ‘fake news?’ According to Merriam-Webster, fake news is defined as fake (“false, counterfeit”) news (“material reported in a newspaper or news periodical or on a newscast”). “But the definition is often expanded to include websites that circulate distorted, decontextualized or dubious information through – for example – clicking baiting headlines that don’t reflect the facts of the story, or undeclared bias” (Hunt). There are two different types of fake news, the first type is news that is completely false, with no facts or evidence to back up anything said in a story. The second type bends the truth to make you side on one side of an argument or to make you believe something the author wants you to believe. This type of fake news isn’t technically fake, but people like Donald Trump have started to use the term fake news to describe it.
The first type of fake news is what you would expect. “In its purest form, fake news is completely made up, manipulated to resemble credible journalism and attract maximum attention and, with it, advertising revenue” (Hunt). The goal of this type of news is usually to make money. It can also be libel, which is telling false information to damage a person’s reputation. “Fake news is frequently used to describe a political story which is seen as damaging to an agency, entity, or person” (How is). This kind of fake news can range from a fake Facebook post that gets spread around to a few hundred people to a national news story that millions of people are tricked to believe. “These are news stories created entirely to deceive readers. The 2016 United States election was rife with examples claiming that “x celebrity has endorsed Trump” when that was not the case” (Carson).
The second type of fake news is much less ‘fake.’ It is when it exaggerates or bends the truth to try and make you support a certain political figure. Known as “slanted reporting of real facts” (Carson). This news can also use catching headlines, that aren’t always true, to attract readers to read the article. These are “selectively-chosen but truthful elements of a story put together to serve an agenda” (Carson).
Although the term ‘fake news’ is relatively new, “bending the truth for political gain is certainly nothing new- and the record of its uses stretch back to ancient times” (Carson), however the most widespread and successful use of fake news started with mass communication. In the 20th century at the very start of mass communication, “the British government used propaganda very effectively in motivating the population against Germany” (Carson). Although fake news and propaganda can have similar goals, they are very different. Propaganda was state controlled, which meant the government could publish it because they had the money and the audience (Carson). Back then, anyone couldn’t just make up a news story to benefit them and gain an audience from social media. “Before the internet, publishing fake news and gaining an audience that could be monetized was nearly impossible for three reasons: distribution and cost, audiences and trust, and law and regulation” (Carson). Distributing news was very difficult in the past and needed an expensive way to distribute the news, which most normal people couldn’t afford (Carson). Building an audience pre-internet was also much more difficult, people believed publishers with good reputations and, a good reputation was expensive to get (Carson). Finally, media laws were much easier to enforce, and if you published fake news you would probably get sued (Carson). For those reasons, most people were not able to publish fake news before the internet.
In 2007, the creation of major social media networks eliminated the three reasons publishing fake news was basically impossible (Carson). With social media, anyone could spread news stories to an audience for basically no cost at all, and sometimes people would even make money for spreading fake news with advertisements. Since spreading fake news cost nothing, losing a reputation did not matter, because you could simply post anything and not even tell your name (Carson). With the internet so many people started to post fake news that media laws became impossible to regulate and people could write what they wanted without being sued (Carson). The internet and social media eliminated almost all reasons why fake news couldn’t be published or widely spread around, and controversies happening in the 21st century made publishing fake news using social media happen even more often.
The 2016 United States Presidential election made fake news take off because of the situation surrounding the election, James Carson called it “a near perfect backdrop.” Donald Trump, the now President of the United States, was calling CNN and the New York Times fake news several times a week, via Twitter (Carson). Trump’s distrust of his opponents led to a growth in fake news that supported him (Carson). The election led to people arguing on social media about what is really fake news and what is facts. Fake news is generally believed to have influenced the United States election.
According to a survey reported on by Kelly Wallace of more than 1,000 adults, 23% have shared a fake news story. According to a different survey by Pew Research center “only 39% of American adults felt “very confident” that they can recognize news that is made up” (Wallace). “Fourteen percent said they shared a story that they knew was fake at the time, and sixteen percent said they shared a story that they later learned was fake (Wallace). “Although 44% of tweens and teens in a recent survey said they can tell the difference between fake news stories and real ones, more than 30% who shared a news story online during the past six months admitted they didn’t get it exactly right” (Wallace). These stats show that even if you think you can tell the difference between fake news and real news, you probably can’t.
Paul Chadwick says fake news “presents a threat so serious that the longstanding codes of ethics of professional journalism should have a new obligation added: expose fake news as fake.” So, what are we doing to stop fake news? In the same article Paul Chadwick says, “many organizations are analyzing and tackling the issue.” “Facebook and Google have promised to crack down on misinformation, although they have been criticized for failing to accept their place in its spread” (Carson). Social media companies have added ways to flag post as fake news but many of their efforts to stop the spread of it have not worked, which makes it hard for people to know what really is real news or fake news.
So, with the start of the Internet and the rise of social media, fake news has spread to a large enough scale to affect nearly everyone who gets news from social media. Fake news can influence our culture and the way people view the world. Although internet providers and social media outlets are trying to stop fake news, it will be extremely difficult to ever make fake news fully go away.