I believe it is highly unethical for students who are learning online to spread misinformation or “fake news” on the internet as it could lead to hundreds or thousands of people being deceived and get the wrong idea as a result.
Fake news has been rampant over the past few years. It was believed that the phrase was invented by US President Donald Trump during the 2016 election. However, this article says that it has existed long before it was used by President Trump as the Merriam-Webster dictionary said on Twitter that “Our research traces ‘fake news’ back to at least 1890. But we won’t be adding the term to the dictionary… yet,”
This article talks about the influence of fake news during the 2016 US presidential election. By using a dataset of 171 million tweets in the five months leading up to Election Day, 30 million tweets from 2.2 million users containing links to various news outlets were found. 25% of those tweets had been spreading fake or otherwise very biased news. Some people have been using the networks of information to uncover how has the most influence in the spreading of fake and traditional news and figure out how exactly fake news influenced the 2016 election. It was found that most of the “fake news” was being spread by Donald Trump supporters.
Even in 2020, misinformation about the recent COVID-19 pandemic is being spread around. This article covers all the fake news being spread about the pandemic. Some of them were intentional while others were not. The article lists two types of fake news, disinformation is spread by people who believe that the virus was caused by immigrants and even the government. While misinformation is simply an innocent mistake in comparison.
We are very susceptible to fake news because it is hard to tell it apart from actual news. Some people like to take advantage of this fact and spread false information to try and get readers on their side, this is why some people believe that the COVID-19 virus was caused by the US government, the Chinese government or 5G.
This article lists some important steps in dealing with misinformation online. Knowing when exactly you should be concerned about the validity of the article you are reading is a useful skill. If the article you are looking at seems to be made for the sole purpose of making people angry, or if it deliberately twists facts to its favour then it is most likely very unreliable as a source of information. These are some of the telltale signs you should look for so you can tell if the article is reliable or not.
Checking out the source of the information in that article is very important as well. One good way to start this would be to check the date the original post was made, also known as a “timestamp”. A news story would most likely cite the source of its information, if it does not then you may have to search for the source yourself. This is a big red flag that the site you are looking at may not be very reliable.
A story in an article may not be necessarily wrong or inaccurate, but more recontextualized so it fits whatever the author’s agenda is. The goal here is to try and find any inconsistencies or contradictions in the story. However, not every one of these is a deliberate attempt to trick people, sometimes they are just simply honest mistakes.
The final and most important step is to weigh the information on the article and judge whether it is trustworthy or not depending on the website. That way people will not be fooled by a satirical news site like The Onion. While it is important to not believe everything that you read, it is just as bad to believe that everything you see is not true. It is best that you find websites that have been accurate more often than not. Expert opinions are much more valuable then the limited information you would be more likely to find.
As these steps show, telling information apart is not a matter of simply judging for yourself. You must search for the source of everything you read in the article to determine whether it is true, it is false, or it is taken out of its original context.
This article from Cornell University delves into hyperpartisans and fake news. Presenting a total of 1,627 news articles from BuzzFeed, all from either 9 political publishers, or 3 mainstream publishers, hyperpartisan left-wing journalists, or right-wing journalists. Out of all the articles 299 of them proved to be fake, with 97% coming from the left and right-wing publishers.
One approach suggested by the article is creating a new way of checking for style similarities called “Unmasking”. Revealing that both left-wing and right-wing publishers have more in common than the two do with the mainstream journalists.
In conclusion, spreading fake news is very unethical whether intentional or not. It can lead to people being misinformed on very important topics like the 2016 election or the COVID-19 outbreak.
