Combatting Misinformation: Insights on Media and Society
School
Humber College**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
CULT 4000
Subject
Chemistry
Date
Dec 10, 2024
Pages
2
Uploaded by CountRock2992
CULT 4000 Final Exam Submission - Gaurav HeerQuestions 1, 4, 51.To those concerned that the increased attention to misinformation has led to anincrease in the public's concern and fear. I would say that it will get harder andharder to determine whether or not the information we are reading is true. Mysuggestion is to verify as much as you can be through searching multiple sourcesto see if the information matches up. Also, searching for high-rated andexperienced journalists to retrieve information from, would be a better tool tocombat the spread of misinformation as these journalists spend lots of timeresearching topics to give out the most informative and neutral articles.Inexperienced journalists can tend to favour one side as well as not verify theinformation they are publishing. Moving on, I would definitely not recommendbelieving the first thing you see while scrolling on social media. Social media isthe easiest and quickest way to spread misinformation throughout the web. Forexample, the teens who were creating fake Donald Trump articles in order to gainrevenue through online engagements were a huge way that misinformation wasspread. Since Donald Trump supporters think of Trump so highly, they would notbother to dispute whether or not the information they are reading is correctunless it does not fit their ideal agenda. I honestly believe that the future of newsmedia is doomed if the spread of misinformation continuously spreads at thepace it is now. As we saw in Big News, polarization was one of the main topicscovered in the film. As misinformation continues to be spread, this will lead toeven larger separations between the community. A quote from Big News stated ““There's going to be polarization in the country no matter what. That’s just wherewe are. But news for profit just amps that up so much more” (Ariana Pekary, BigNews). This explains how polarization is increased through discourse on newsfor profit channels, as well as explains how the public, political, and academic.discourse around media misinformation has brought much more attention to theissue. To summarize, I believe that people that are concerned over the spread ofmisinformation in the future have a very justifiable reason to feel that way.4. I believe that political, media and corporate elites should slightly be punished andblamed for the spread of information. Although it is mainly random users of social mediathat spread false info across the internet, people in media should be triple-checking andfact-checking anything they are going to say to the public. Someone who is very wellknown for spreading false information without checking for facts is Donald Trump. Anexample of this can be shown in numerous press conferences and rallies as he makestons of false claims about other people and mainly the Democrat party. He would also
spread misinformation over Twitter for millions of viewers to read. One point I recallhearing about in 2020 is when Trump claimed on Twitter that he won the 2020 electionby a lot of votes. This is another example of how Donald Trump would be someone whois the candidate for the republican party, spewing false information onto social mediawhich then leads to a large mass of polarization due to one side believing that DonaldTrump is telling the truth and the other side believing that Donald Trump is a fraud. Thisexample explains how not only random users of social media can spread falseinformation that gets spread, but also the head of government for one of the largestcountries in the world can also spread false info. Media misinformation also reallydepends on how the viewers interpret the content they read as well. For example, withthe entire Colin Kaepernick situation, the entire country of the United States was split asone side believed his kneeling was nothing but a peaceful protest against the racialprejudices faced by African Americans in the country whereas the other sign saw it as asign of disrespect towards the American flag and the soldiers that fought for theircountry. Donald Trump was also completely against the kneeling so it created a hugepolarization gap between the community, which goes to show how mediamisinformation can also be through the misinterpretation of media.5. Over these last 2-3 years, the world went shambled after the outbreak of COVID-19.Not only did the world go into shambles, but so did the media. This outbreak created awhole new category of misinformation in the media. One of the main discussions thatwere circled around was discussions about vaccines. There were many differentspeculations by people about the side effects of the vaccine and how it can harm thehuman race. One very strange example I recall which was also discussed in class wasthe fact that vaccines can somehow lead to autism. This theory was actually fairlypopular and had a lot of people talking about it which I found very interesting as therewas not really any backup to prove this statement. Another rumour about the vaccineswas that they implant a chip into you to collect intel on us. Also, to no surprise, DonaldTrump was also one of the main misinformation spreaders about the whole COVID-19fiasco as he would constantly tweet lies on Twitter about how the cases of COVID weregoing down all over America. Trump would often tweet these lies about COVID statisticsto millions of viewers on social media in which some would believe this false informationand gain false hope. To summarize, I feel that a lesson people learned is to not trusteverything you see on the internet, and always try to fact-check yourself to the best ofyour ability, because even a government official such as Donald Trump can spread falseinformation publicly without fact-checking.