Technology impacts our lives more than we realize on a daily basis. The way we get our news, both locally, nationally, and internationally has been directly affected by our rapid expansion of high tech devices. One hundred years ago the only way to get the news was to read a printed newspaper, word of mouth, or to listen to a radio broadcast. The past one hundred years there have been technological advancements that allow us to get news on television, social media, smartphones and even on our smart watches. Just in this past decade there has been a shift in the way people get their news. Younger generations prefer the internet as a place to receive their information and news, leaving them vulnerable to the fake news. The internet is now the preferred medium for the younger generations. Before the internet, they were receiving their information by having a printed newspaper delivered daily to their homes and businesses. Who knows how we will get our news in another one hundred years. However, these advancements aren’t always helpful since there is a lot of fake news. Online news stories are not always credible and accurate since they can be posted without fact-checking. These news stories are not always credible and are not always accurate. With the increase in fake news across the globe, it is getting harder and harder for people to believe any news, even if it real news.
Newspaper decline
For decades Americans would wake up in the morning and walk to the front door to get the newspaper on the doorstep and read it with a nice hot cup of coffee. Now, it’s more likely that Americans are getting the news from their smartphones or other smart devices as they wake up. Younger generations are using smartphones to get their news instead of picking up a newspaper because they are constantly multitasking and have a very short attention span. Smartphone news apps can let users set up a preference to what the user wants notifications about. These apps will also filter out unwanted articles and present the users most wanted articles at the top of their feed. Reading paper copies of news articles can make it harder to find the information readers want. With the rise of technology, its proving that younger generations have a lesser attention span and can’t be bothered to sift through news papers to find what they want to read. With the rise of global warming we are seeing a ten percent decrease in sales for newspapers due to the environmental drawback that is created with newspapers.(Barthel 2017). We are seeing this decrease in sales because today’s consumers are starting to be worried about if the paper is recycled and where it will end up afterwards. Millenials are less interested in reading print news than those of previous generations and would rather search their phones or laptops and not use paper. The internet makes it possible to learn about something seconds after the event has taken place. As a result many media companies have made social media accounts to stay up to date with the new generation. This allows them to survive in some form as the industry they are part of grows and changes. Even people who enjoy being informed on daily happenings may find themselves bored by the news in print. We are beginning to recognize how toxic news can be and we are learning to take the first steps toward getting accurate information. Our brains are wired to pay attention to large, scandalous, sensational, shocking, people related, fast changing, loud, graphic headlines. Our brains have limited attention to spend on things that are small, abstract, ambivalent, complex, slow to develop and quiet, much less silent. News organizations systematically exploit this bias. The newspaper industry started its decline after the introduction of the television and televised broadcasting in the nineteen fifties and then after the emergence of the internet to the public in the nineteen nineties and the twenty first century with its endless choices of media for people. Since then the readers of printed media has declined while the digital numbers continue to climb. This is mostly due to television and the internet being able to offer immediate information to viewers and breaking news stories, in a more visually stimulating way with sound, moving images and video. Newspapers are confined to paper and ink and are not considered as ‘alive’ as these other forms of news. Smartphone use has also been on the rise and contributed to the decline of newspaper sales in the more recent years. According to a recent study by Business Insider ‘Between 2015 and 2016, the tide turned swiftly against newspapers in Britain. A key threshold was crossed: smartphone ownership among people aged over 55 ‘ the most important newspaper-reading demographic ‘ nearly doubled’ (Edwards 2017). What does this mean for the newspaper industry? It means that as those ages fifty five and over are more likely to read news on there smart phones as opposed to going out and buying a newspaper. The result is a lack of sales and a lake of revenue for the industry. It’s not just international or national the newspaper industry is also a dying breed locally, with ‘The Citizen’ out of Laconia suspending publication in 2016 after citing cost of production and lack of sales. One thing that is clear is that newspaper industry is under pressure due to the crisis affecting sales and revenue. Together with the payment for access to articles on their websites they have embraced the idea of charging their readers for getting each day’s issue on their smartphones.
Fake news
With a growing number of users among all social media platforms getting there news primarily on social media there is a rise of news that is not from a credible source, or fake news. You might ask yourself what is fake news? Cambridge dictionary defines fake news as ‘ False stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using media, usually used to influence political views or as a joke’. Fake news usually carries a bias towards what the story is about. In schools across America teachers have been forced to teach their students how to check for fake news, Students see news and validate their sources will lead to the student’s realization that sometimes their news comes from a family of sources with little to no credibility, such as social media. Unfortunately students should always fact check news or use multiple sources to get credible information. Many millennials have related to fact checking their news due to the rise of fake news with thirty nine percent of millennials getting their news from more than one source now. During the 2016 Presidential election Edgar Maddison Welch walked into a Washington DC pizzeria with an assault rifle and fired shots at customers after reading that presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was running a child trafficking ring out of the pizzaria. Thankfully no one was injured and officers brought Welch into custody. This incident which the media dubbed as ‘#Pizzagate’ was of course found to be not true. PBS publisher Nsikan Akpan wrote this about Welch’s actions Incidents like the #Pizzagate shooting signify just one step in a long, dark trail of real world consequences caused by fake news ‘ one that started well before this year’ (Akpan 2016). The 2016 presidential election has had a lot of fake news or satire stories relating to it and both parties nominees. In the final months leading up to the election there was a big rise in fake news relating to the election. According to a BuzzFeed News article fake news actually out performed real news on Facebook. ‘ During these critical months of the campaign, 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. Within the same time period, the 20 best-performing election stories from 19 major news websites generated a total of 7,367,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.’ (Silverman 2016). That only makes up a fraction of Facebook’s 1.8 million active users in America however fake news got over one million more interactions and that is very concerning. Silverman goes on to say ‘ Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton. Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump’s interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American “refugees” fleeing Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.’ ( Silverman 2016). These stories all seem a little hard to believe and pretty far fetched. So why do people believe fake news? Is Facebook responsible for the rise of fake news? That answer will all depend on who you however Brendan Nyhan professor of political science at Dartmouth College said ‘ I’m troubled that Facebook is doing so little to combat fake news, even if they did not swing the election, the evidence is clear that bogus stories have incredible reach on the network. Facebook should be fighting misinformation, not amplifying it.’ (Nyah 2016). Weather or not you think Facebook had any pull in the election or not it is clear that fake news has a profound effect on our decisions. Although fake news has been around since the tale of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ it became very mainstream leading up to the two thousand sixteen presidential election. It is evident that most fake news in revolved around President Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. A study by Brendan Nyhan at Dartmouth College says ‘27.4 percent of Americans over the age of 18 – which translates to more than 65 million people – visited a pro-Trump or pro-Clinton fake news website during the time surveyed’ (Nyhan 2016). Over a quarter or voters visited fake news websites FINISH SENTENCE Jamie Morton of the New Zealand Herald says this about why we might believe fake news. “We’re choosing what matters to us and how to engage with the world, whether that’s which newspaper we pick up in the morning or what we have for breakfast. So we started to think, it’s when our goals to fit in with certain groups are stronger than the goal we have to be accurate that we are more likely to be led astray.” (Morton 2018) Add something about older generations In a 2016 Dartmouth College study by Brendan Nyhan ‘Americans 60 years and older read the most fake news’ (Nyhan 2016). Among many findings by Nyhan the most prominent was that those those sixty and older are more likely to read fake news. According to the same study ‘Only half of the people who had visited a fake news website had also visited a fact-checking site’ (Nyhan 2016). With only half of those who visited a fake news website fact checking what they are reading that leaves another half of people potentially believe whatever the story they are reading is true.
Implications of fake news
As fake news on social media continues to grow and we continue to share these stories there are real consequences to believing these stories. Getting back to the #Pizzagate incident i mentioned earlier. This could have had disastrous consequences had Welch shot more than a couple times. This also could have been avoided if Welch bothered to check where his news comes from and made sure it was from a trusted source. When fake news is shared on social media it reaches many people, according to Facebook the average user has three hundred thirty eight friends. When fake news is shared on any social media platform it reaches more than just that users friends. That one share will on average, lead to two follow follow up shares, so the reach has increased. These stories will be shared more and more by even more people. The Media companies will often tell false information for publicity or because they are hiding something from the public or about their product. Media plays a very big role when it comes to socializing with society. However some facts may not ever be heard. Media telling false information is legal but it loses the trust of the public once they find out, not fair to the people who trust the media, and news shouldn’t hide facts from the public that they need to be aware of it. ADD MORE How do we crack down on fake news? France is putting in place laws to allow its judges to remove or block fake news during national elections.’Frances president Emmanuel Macron, has railed against the “defamatory untruths” and “deceitful propaganda” of Kremlin-backed media organisations such as RT and Sputnik, which both have French-language websites’ (Khan 2018). Many European countries are or have been putting in place laws to try to stop fake news. ‘Germany introduced it first “hate speech law” that forces platforms to quickly remove terrorist content, xenophobia and fake news or face fines of up to ’50m.’ (Khan 2018). Many European law makers are trying to out these new laws in place so fake news will not interfere with elections.
‘Julian King, European commissioner for security, is demanding a ‘clear game plan’ for how social media companies can operate during sensitive election periods ‘ starting with European Parliament polls in May 2019’ (Khan 2018).
Conclusion
The way we have get our news has changed dramatically over time. New technology is changing how people receive online news and in another hundred years we could see a completely new way of staying informed about what’s going on in the world.
The bottomline, if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Fake news is just that fake, its intended to draw the reader or viewer in and entertain them instead of inform them.