False News: The Rise Of Fake News

Finding the truth on the internet has become harder and harder in recent years. This is because of the rise of false or fake news. Before the rise of fake news, fake news was just satirical articles meant to be funny and they didn’t get much attention. But now, fake news has exploded in popularity, even making it onto huge news networks like CNN or The Washington Post. Fake news can become harmful and have real world consequences. It is a problem that is rapidly becoming more widespread. The problem raises a couple questions and topics such as, the impact of fake news, when fake news started to become a problem, and how people are trying to stop fake news.

The spread of fake news has raised the question, how did this problem start?

When MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN all propagated the Hands up, Don't shoot lie.” (Ohlheiser) In case you didn’t know, the Hands up, Don’t shoot was a slogan during the Ferguson riots in 2014. CNN stated that the slogan wasn’t used during the riots, which was one of the first times fake news was used on a big news network. So fake news actually became a problem in 2014. A look into the inception of the problem can still be seen even as recent as last year, like when a man named Eric Tucker said that Anti-Trump protesters were being paid to do their demonstrations (Maheshwari). The lie quickly spread, which gives us insight on how fake news became a problem. “This is how Fake news became problem. With more technological connection, people can spread fake news all over the world.” (Maheshwari) Another way that fake news became a problem is that people just want to confirm their biases or prejudice. “"Fake news thrives because there is a lazy, incurious, self-satisfied public that wants it to thrive; because large swaths of that public don't want news in any traditional sense, so much as they want vindication of their preconceptions and prejudices," writes Norman

Some effects of fake news can even be found in our recent election back in 2016. “The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.”(Timburg) This is an example of how people can be influenced by other countries with malicious intentions. It is still yet to be seen if the Russian propaganda campaign succeeded in its mission. But you can still see how harmful this propaganda could be to the US. Also, “while individual fake news stories may not be dangerous their potential to cause damage becomes more powerful over time and when considered in the aggregate."(BBC news) In simple terms, overtime, individual fake news stories can become more harmful. Especially when more and more stories come together. One potentially useful fact about fake news is that the US government can use propaganda photos from other countries to locate certain harmful people. Like how “Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, unveiling what he claimed was a new nuclear device. But the image, from March 2016, may show more than Mr. Kim intended: the possible range of the missile behind him, his relationship with the military, even his precise location.”