Era Of Fake News Article Analysis

For this writing assignment, I chose the article “Welcome to the Era of Fake News”, written by Jonathan Albright in 2017. In this article, Jonathan writes about fake news, reason for it, and researching ways that it can be combated. He also states and elaborates on 4 different ideas people should consider when analyzing “fake news”. A fake news story that is based on sentiment posted to a social media site will entice friends to use to emotionally driven language to talk about the story (Albright, 2017, pg. 88). The article goes on to mention how social media sites actually determine which news stories should be shown to which of its users. Albright talks about how just making sure articles are factually correct will not be enough to get

Is social media good, or is it bad? I would like to say it used to be very good, but its quality is deteriorating as time goes on. One of the many reasons for this is fake news. Long before President Trump’s war on fake news was brought to light, outlandish stories could be read on Facebook that many users believed to be true. But how can such outrageous stories be thought of as true by so many people? I believe it is because the stories caused emotional reactions from users, which had a domino effect on their friends, and so on. “For instance, third-party applications allow the rapid amplification of emotionally-charged messages across platforms such as Twitter. This strategic distortion of attention can hasten the spread of misinformation and the establishment of “alternative facts”” (Albright, 2017, pg. 88). This can be very dangerous. If the story, which is not true, pertains to socially relevant topics today, such as sexual discrimination, sexual abuse claims, etc., it can mean the end to a career or worse to someone that could be completely innocent. “Technology companies’ core business involves the design of identity-based data collection and profiling systems” (Albright, 2017, pg. 88). The social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, use algorithms to properly match advertisements and news stories to users. This can also be dangerous as news stories that can further incite strong emotional responses are going to be shown to users who are more apt to react in such a