Fecteau, Matt. “Fake News free for all; examining the political implications of fake news.” The Hill, thehill.com/blogs, https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/312906-fake-news-free-for-all-examining-the-political-implications-of January 5, 2017
In a democracy based on Socratic ideals of dialogue between two informed parties, the proliferation of fake news makes reasonable discussion increasingly difficult. Instead of debating pertinent issues, the conversation as shifted to debunking conspiracy theories. Rather than discussing how to fix Obamacare, healthcare experts need to debunk absurd claims about death panels. In an already politically hyper-polarized environment, these deranged conspiracy theories contribute nothing to the public good, and need to be restrained.
Fake news. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/10/how-to-cite-wikipedia-in-apa-style.html.
Fake news can reduce the impact of real news by competing with it; a Buzzfeed analysis found that the top fake news stories about the 2016 U.S. presidential election received more engagement on Facebook than top stories from major media outlets.[17] It also has the potential to undermine trust in serious media coverage.[18] The term has at times been used to cast doubt upon legitimate news,[19] [20] and U.S. President Donald Trump has been credited with popularizing the term by using it to describe any negative press coverage of himself.[21] [22] It has been increasingly criticized, due in part to Trump's misuse, with the British government deciding to avoid the term, as it is "poorly-defined" and "conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference".[23]
LaJeunesse, William. “Facebook's war on 'fake news' has skeptics asking: Who decides?” Fox News. Foxnews.com, 16 December 2016, https://www.foxnews.com/us/facebooks-war-on-fake-news-has-skeptics-asking-who-decides
Facebook’s plan to purge fake news relies on users, who flag stories they suspect of being bogus. Then, those stories are sent to third-party fact checkers, including Politifact, Factcheck, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, ABC News and Snopes. If ultimately deemed questionable, the story is labeled "disputed."
The fly in the ointment, critics say, is that even media outlets and self-professed truth squads are biased. And distinguishing between made-up stories and ones the news police don’t agree with is risky business, they say.
"Everyone who cares about free speech and a free press has cause for alarm," said Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief of Breitbart, a conservative news site that has been accused without evidence of peddling fake news. "By making progressive so-called "fact-checkers" the alleged arbiters of truth, Facebook has chosen to place First Amendment rights on a perilous path."
Even The New York Times, in an opinion column, has warned Facebook against the plan.
Palmer, Bill. “Donald Trump just handed out his “Fake News Awards” as his own world burns.” Palmer Report, https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/burns-fake-news-trump/7447/
January 17, 2018
Donald Trump is a fake billionaire who is best known for hosting a television show where he fake fired people. He tells so many lies, fact checkers have trouble tracking them all. He’s so corrupt, he has to resort to yelling “fake news” whenever the media exposes yet another one of his embarrassing escapades or criminal scandals. On Wednesday evening, Trump finally handed out his long promised “Fake News Awards.” They were predictably a dud. He couldn’t have chosen a worse time to take his eye off the ball.
Disillusioned Politico. “Fake News.” Urban Dictionary. 6 March 2017. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fake%20news
A term formerly useful for describing websites consisting entirely of intentionally fabricated news stories, but now used to describe virtually anything that does not mesh with one's own views.
Fake News on Social Media. (2019). In Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Gale. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/OBOYIA996440220/OVIC?u=byuidaho&sid=OVIC&xid=b79c4f57
Media experts define fake news as factually false information, delivered in the context of a supposedly true news story, that is deliberately designed to deceive readers or viewers. In twenty-first century contexts, the term has been used to describe Internet and social media disinformation campaigns. The distinction between misinformation and disinformation has a critical impact on public understanding of fake news. "Misinformation" typically describes falsehoods of fact that are spread either purposely or accidentally. Satire is an example of purposeful misinformation, while unintentional journalistic inaccuracies offer an example of accidental misinformation. "Disinformation," on the other hand, always refers to information specifically designed to mislead or deceive consumers to influence their attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. Thus, fake news is disinformation, not misinformation.
Social media is particularly vulnerable to facilitating the spread of fake news, since the algorithms used to generate targeted content can easily be exploited by troll farm actors. Online agitators exploit political tensions on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, spreading disinformation designed to elicit strong emotional responses from users on both sides of the political spectrum. Their work typically focuses on specific, divisive, and controversial issues, such as immigration, and aims to inflame existing disagreement among members of the voting public to further polarize public opinion. Dividing the public into opposing segments serves to make the voting tendencies of each group easier to manipulate.
Fake news has become a highly politicized issue since the 2016 US presidential election. President Trump has consistently dismissed his media critics as purveyors of fake news, effectively weaponizing the term and turning it into an epithet used to demean media sources with perceived partisan biases. Trump's consistent attacks on the media appear to have swayed public sentiment on the issue, with a 2018 Monmouth University poll finding that 77 percent of Americans believe that major legacy media outlets (including newspapers and television news broadcasters) report fake news at least occasionally, if not regularly. Yet, the same poll also found that Trump himself has lower levels of public trust than any of the news and information outlets he denounces.
Shephard, A. (2020). YouTube's Fake News Problem Isn't Going Away. In Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Gale. (Reprinted from YouTube's Fake News Problem Isn't Going Away, The New Republic, 2018, February 23) https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/GKFGVF752713647/OVIC?u=byuidaho&sid=OVIC&xid=ca545b26
The problem is that one of the "deeper, subconscious needs" YouTube is built to fulfill leads people to insane conspiracy theories. There is something deeply human about this—the desire to find meaning and order amid chaos. But that doesn't change the fact that YouTube is both a giant invitation and mechanism to circulate misinformation after events like the Parkland massacre.
Part of the problem is that the social concept of "trending" is inherently broken. As New York's Brian Feldman wrote earlier this week, "it selects and highlights content with no eye toward accuracy, or quality. Automated trending systems are not equipped to make judgments; they can determine if things are being shared, but they cannot determine whether that content should be shared further" (http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/02/trending-on-social-media-is-worthless.html). YouTube is built to amplify videos that people are gravitating toward, even if those videos have no basis in reality.
O'connor, C., & Weatherall, J. O. (2019). The Social Media Propaganda Problem: Is Worse Than You Think. Issues in Science and Technology, 36(1), 30+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A604716157/OVIC?u=byuidaho&sid=OVIC&xid=357469fd
Of course, even before social media, friends could pass along falsehoods they had picked up from sources of disinformation. But there is a key difference. In pre-social-media information environments, only a small number of organizations had the capacity to broadcast content to large audiences. But on social media, memes, images, and claims can be widely rebroadcast by users. The result is that peer-to-peer transmission--that is, propaganda in the guise of misinformed individual speech, as opposed to disinformation--plays a much more significant role in how ideas are spread.
There are two reasons the strategy of creating disinformation that becomes misinformation is so powerful. First, people trust their friends and others whom they perceive to be like themselves. In deciding what pieces of information to believe, people take the perceived trustworthiness of the sharer to be very important. We more readily accept information shared by a friend or trusted peer than from someone we do not know.
Second, when disinformation transforms into misinformation, it is harder to detect. When people see memes shared by friends, they do not usually know where they originated. If all of Russia's disinformation were readily traceable to a single source, it would be easy to learn to discount that source. This is not possible when memes are spread from peer to peer. In this way, the structure of new media creates opportunities for propagandists, because the viral spread of misinformation obscures the role of bad actors in its creation.
Virden, D. (2018). A Media Journey: from Edward R. Murrow to Fake News. American Diplomacy. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A577909977/OVIC?u=byuidaho&sid=OVIC&xid=160e977b
Donald Trump is hardly the first politician to complain about the press. Republicans do it. Democrats do it. Even Pope Francis has been known to criticize faulty media reports. All leaders do it at times. They'd rather the press be a cheerleader than a watchdog.
Yet all democratic statesmen concede, however reluctantly in some cases, that a free press is essential. That's true even when reporters make mistakes or file reports authorities find unhelpful. A free press is how we hold our leaders accountable. It's a cornerstone of democracy (as Americans have been preaching to the world for years).
Without it, people stop believing what their leaders tell them, and authorities then lose the right to govern,
Experiences with Fake News among US Adults, 2018 [Chart]. (2019). Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Gale. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/EBLCCA242551528/OVIC?u=byuidaho&sid=OVIC&xid=bdef3063