Social Media Bias For The Spread Of Fake News

Recently, the term fake news has gained a mass amount of publicity, especially around the time of the 2016 presidential election. Fake news can be interpreted in many ways. In its simplest form, fake news is exactly what the name suggests. It is false information meant to be understood as real, credible news. It is usually intentionally made, but can sometimes be accidentally created by misinterpreted information. Though nobody can pinpoint the origin of fake news, many have their own ideas as to who or what is responsible. Some blame the creators of fake news for the recent spread of fabricated facts, while others argue that social media is to blame. While it is true that creators of fake news are mostly at fault for its spread, people who blindly circulate it without confirming its credibility share a great deal of this blame.

Readers should question most of what they see. It is a reader’s job to confirm a source before spreading it. Wynne Davis explains this in her article, “Fake or Real? How to Self-Check the News and Get the Facts.” She states, “Sam Wineburg, a professor of education and history at Stanford… said a solution is for all readers to read like fact checkers.” Wineburg is saying that instead of believing everything we see, readers should verify content as true or false. Once readers verifiy a story’s authenticity, they can then proceed to share it. Simply checking information for small lies before sharing it could tremendously reduce the amount of false information circulating the