Social media contributes to the proliferation of fake news:due to the existence of echo chambers, heightened reactions among users and the presence of bots on social platforms. Social media, a large part of the lives of many today, is a key contributor to the spread of misinformation within our society.
Firstly, I will be talking about echo chambers in relation to this captivating and topical issue.
Echo chambers
Social media contributes to the proliferation of fake news from the existence of echo chambers. On social media, people follow whom they are interested in and view content they like, this creates the ideal experience for the user. This seems perfectly okay, however, in relation to echo chamber dissertation, it has been observed that the internet environment contains established groups of those who possess ideas of a similar nature (which can be false), the attitudes and beliefs of these groups are then strengthened, causing greater divisions in beliefs in society (Adamic & Glance,2005; Del Vicario et al. 2015; Del Vicario, Zollo, Caldarelli, Scala, & Quattrociocchi, 2017).There are also concerns that people may not be able to meet face to face or travel to meet like-minded individuals, it is therefore suggested that the internet is the perfect space for these groups to interact and perhaps share falsified content (Wollebæk, Karlsen, Steen-Johnsen and Enjolras, 2019). In addition, it has been observed that issues also arise when members of echo chambers engage in debates with those who possess corresponding views as there is a lack of diversity in opinions and beliefs, this can lead beliefs that are false to be heightened even further (Wollebæk, et al. 2019).
Heightened reactions
Social media contributes to the proliferation of fake news due to heightened reactions among users. Fake news can be defined by falsified information that visually seems to be regular news media information in its appearance, but not in its organizational ways or purpose (Lazer et al., 2018). Fake news can be incredibly misleading for online users leading them to become fearful, intimidated and scared, emotions such as fear for example, can be identified as a loss of control and an underlying negative feeling that is hard to distinguish (Valentino, Brader, Groenendyk, Gregorowicz, &Hutchings 2011).These Heightened and negative reactions caused by false information evidently negatively effects our online information world, as it is noted that individuals experiencing anxiety and fear are driven to seek more information and doubt prior beliefs as a result of encountering information that contradicts their attitudes and beliefs (Wollebæk et al., 2019). Furthermore, in a research study on Twitter, news media on the platform was analyzed from 2006-17, it included 126,000 pieces of information that had been posted over 4.5 million times by 3 million people (Vosoughi, Roy & Aral, 2018). From this study it was observed that fake news travelled greater lengths quickly on social media, especially with regards to political news (Vosoughi et al, 2018). It was also observed that humans are more likely to spread false information in comparison to bots, this is particularly concerning for the online community (Vosoughi et al, 2018).
Presence of bots
Social media contributes to the proliferation of fake news with the presence of bots on platforms. It is apparent that many social media sites, for example Facebook or Twitter, allow bots on their platform, this causes a surge in spamming and posting of messages repeatedly, reaching many users at a given time (Chu et al, 2010), this can be particularly harmful if the shared content is fake. Social media sites have multiple types of bot profiles, for example, those of entities and corporations with several various types of goals (Al-Rawi, Groshek, & Zhang, 2019). In addition, it is suggested that bot accounts are not totally automated and there seems to be an element of human spamming involved (Al-Rawi et al, 2019). It is also predicted that these bots will continue to become more advanced in time to come (Al-Rawi et al, 2019). Additionally, bots have also influenced politics, for example, the first presidential speech made by Donald Trump was primarily named the most tweeted in time, but it has been discovered this was as a result of pro-Trump bots (Al-Rawi et al, 2019). This was observed when hashtags such as #JointSession and #JointAddress were tweeted by accounts that had never tweeted prior (Musgrave, 2017).
Conclusion
- Social media contributes to the proliferation of fake news due to echo chambers, heightened reactions amongst users and the presence of bots on platforms.
- Social media contributes to the proliferation of fake news due to the existence echo chambers in the internet environment, these contain established groups of those who possess ideas of a similar nature (which can be false), the attitudes and beliefs of these groups are then strengthened, and this can be particularly harmful when news is fake (Adamic & Glance,2005; Del Vicario et al. 2015; Del Vicario, Zollo, Caldarelli, Scala, & Quattrociocchi, 2017).
- Heightened reactions amongst users enables proliferation of fake news on social media, for example, fear and anxiety occur amongst users with fake news online, this causes users to doubt prior beliefs and seek out more information (Wollebæk, et al. 2019), in addition, fake news travels greater lengths at a fast pace on social media (Vosoughi et al, 2018).
- Lastly, the existence of bots in a social media world allows for the proliferation of fake news, this was seen with the presence of bots on Twitter and Facebook, causing a surge in spamming and posting of messages repeatedly, reaching many users at a given time (Chu et al, 2010) .
2020-11-23-1606151253