‘Fake news’ would be seen as an oxymoron as it seems to contradict the definition of news. News is generally defined as information or reports of recent or previously unknown events. If it is designed to inform viewers about what is happening around them, it must be true. However, ‘fake news’ has now entered popular lexicon – to the extent that Collins Dictionary named "fake news" its word of the year for 2017, saying that it saw an "unprecedented usage increase" of 365% since 2016. It did not elaborate on what contributed to the uptick in usage. However, many media outlets have observed that US President Trump has helped popularise the term. As a result, ‘fake news’ has been increasingly used by other world leaders.
‘Fake news’ is a type of journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes. Nowadays, if is commonly shared through print, broadcast news media and mostly social media. However, it is regularly circulated through mainstream media. ‘Fake news’ is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person. As a result, it can cause its outlets to gain financially. ‘Fake news’ can also be used to generate internet click revenue. This is done by using dishonest, exaggerated news headlines. In this circumstance, ‘fake news’ is similar to ‘clickbait’ headlines and they also both rely on advertising revenue that is generate when people go onto their articles, regardless of the truthfulness of the article. ‘Fake news’ also differs from satire, as satire is done with the intention of amusing its audience rather than misleading its audience. It can also be completely made up, and then manipulated to be slightly more similar to articles from credible outlets and journalists. This is done to attract more attention to them, and thus, giving the outlet more advertising revenue. Online ‘fake news’ outlets deliberately make their website names such as worldpoliticus.com, usconservativetoday.com, usadailypolitics.com to add credibility to the website. These organisations may even put the website onto an international domain to add to its legitimacy. They then advertise their websites on social media to get more people to use their websites in order to get higher revenue. An example of this is Macedonian teenagers setting up websites like donaldtrumpnews.co on a USA domain during the 2016 USA election campaigns. These teenagers were posting plagiarised ‘fake news’ content heavily in favour of Donald Trump. By the end of the election campaign, they had earnt approximately $5,000 per month. For media outlets, the ability to attract viewers to their websites is necessary to generate online advertising revenue. If publishing a story with false content attracts users, these benefits advertisers and improves ratings. Easy access to online advertisement revenue, increased political polarization, and the popularity of social media, primarily the Facebook News Feed, have all been implicated in the spread of ‘fake news’, which competes with legitimate news stories. Hostile government actors have also been implicated in generating and propagating ‘fake news’, particularly during elections.
‘Fake news’ is now causing increasing risks to democracy unless the governments take action to combat ‘fake news’ data manipulation and disinformation. Social media companies are also not able to notice the vast numbers of ‘fake news’ organisations advertising their dishonest articles. ‘Fake news’ is generally used to target people with hyper-partisan views, (which may potentially play to their fears) in order to influence their voting plans and behaviour. As a result, ‘fake news’ poses great threats to democracy. It is also raising concerns about the way that online data can be manipulated to impact elections. An example of the consequences of ‘fake news’ was the 2016 US presidential election. Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets were displaying fake articles persuading millions of Americans to believe that Donald Trump was a worthier leader than Hilary Clinton. One article had the headline: “I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office, they’re honest and can’t be bought”. However, what Clinton actually said was: “I would like to see more successful business people run for office”. By changing to headline to heavily support Trump, is likely to persuade readers, particularly those who do not follow the news as closely, to almost immediately support Trump too. Even for the people who say the true headline and then saw the fake one, it may give them an impression that Clinton alluded to Trump when she said “successful business people” (even though she most likely did not) to also contemplate supporting Trump. By changing just the headline of articles, ‘fake news’ has the capability to change election votes and it poses an immense threat to democracy.
Despite the instant, perverse gratification of having your worst societal fears and neuroses constantly validated in a nightmarish echo-chamber, few reasonable people would willingly choose to place themselves into such a ‘filter bubble’. Fortunately, informed media consumers can choose to remove themselves from their filter bubbles by rethinking their relationship with the platforms that inform them and assuming some of the roles once ceded to professional journalists in the era before social media. People should always read or watch news with the assumption that there is never an unbiased opinion. Therefore, identifying bias in outlets people follow is a way to get trapped with ‘fake news’. Another way to reduce the power of ‘fake news’ is to read/watch news that people agree and disagree with, instead of just reading media that they agree with. People should follow a wide variety of articles and outlets, and then they benefit by witnessing new perspectives to issues. If people can realise that other perspectives and arguments exist, they will be able to take a more nuanced position themselves as they have exposed themselves to things they agree with and disagree with. This will also help them discover some outlets may post articles that are fake. For examples, in America, abcnews.com.co turns out to be a completely difference outlet than abcnews.com, despite the similar website name. By exposing themselves to a wide range of news outlets, people will not only understand different perspectives, but also be able to detect when an article is being dishonest. By being able to identify bias in news outlets and exposing people to a wide range of outlets, ‘fake news’ would be a much smaller problem than it is now.
Whilst ‘fake news’ has the capability to cause give people false perceptions on politics, and tell them about events that never happened, people can very easily prevent themselves from unknowingly trusting ‘fake news’. If they read more news from a variety of different established sources, they will be able to critique certain articles and be able to understand the reality of what is going on around them.