Social media reporting and misinformation
Newspapers are not as popular as they once used to be. Now, a majority of people rely on social media as their main source of news. Social media has made it easy for us to get our news with just a click. It has grown so rapidly over the years and continues to grow. While there are advantages to getting our news from social media, it raises some concerns.
Twitter has become the most popular social media platform for news. Up to 71% of twitter users use the platform as their main source of news according to this tweet. By clicking on the link, it shows you the “30 must-follow twitter accounts for breaking news.” They’ve made it that easy for us where we can click on a link and it tells us the best accounts to follow for news.
A downside to social media reporting is that we are not able to tell if something is factual. It’s crazy how fast something can go viral online, yet we do not know if it is completely true. This is also known as something that we call “fake news.” Writers purposely will make a click bait title in order to get people to click on it. They will also use ridiculous headlines and fonts to gain the reader’s attention. A lot of people will click on the headline of an article, and not even read it fully. With the declining trust in news, it coincides with the increasing use of social media as being a main source of information. Distrust in the news leads to spreading misinformation which is very easy to do, so it is important to be aware of it.
This article shares vital information on the spreading of misinformation and what we can do to combat it. This article suggests sharing information from official health sources and credible news sources. Also to use fact-checker tools like Snopes to verify the information before sharing it on social media.
It may seem that we aren’t able to escape the fake news and misinformation on social media. However, we are able to fight it ourselves.
Instagram decided to take matters into their own hands in order to prevent the spreading of misinformation. Their goal is to prevent false misinformation from going viral on Instagram. Instagram warns users with false information by labeling the post that contains false information. People can choose to share the post with their followers, but it will notify other users with the false information label.
This video goes into the differences between misinformation and disinformation which is important to distinguish. While they may sound really similar, they don’t mean the same thing. With misinformation, people may spread something they aren’t aware isn’t true but their intention is good. With disinformation, people are purposefully trying to influence or mislead someone knowing that the information is false.
The big question here is WHY people spread misinformation on social media. While there will always be people who spread it, we are able to fight. That’s why it is important for people to be able to identify false claims on social media platforms. Social media may not be the most reliable place to get your news from, however if you just be sure to verify the information by using online tools like fact-checkers and make sure the that the sources are credible.
