The Negative Effects Of The False News And Social Media

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In this day and age, people have nearly unlimited access to information. Despite this fact, truth in the media is often difficult to determine. People of all ages and educational backgrounds can fall for false news, making it frustrating to know for sure if what you read is trustworthy. Fake news is often more prominent through social media outlets due to its increasing popularity and accessibility. Many news stories look and sound real and are hard to differentiate from real news. The damage created by spreading these false stories has had harsh, and often long lasting effects, with negative outcomes spreading faster than those who try to set the record straight. Fake news is something that can catch people off guard; it is sneaky, believable, …show more content…

In society, social media seems to be the birthplace of most fake news. “ It makes everyone look bad when outlets fall for fake bait. Over the holidays, a heartwarming story about a Santa Claus who visited a child’s deathbed went viral. Three days later, the Knoxville News Sentinel, which originally published the story, retracted it, but not before it had spread to CNN, Fox, USA Today and more.” (Borcel). This quote not only provides evidence, of how harmful fake news is, but how believable the story was and how even news outlets like CNN fell for the false article. Lies and misinformation have been around for a very long time but recently, lies about serious topics, otherwise known as fake news, have snaked their way into social media, advertising, and potentially influenced our most recent election (Wendling). The speed in which the news passed along, was caused because of the way people interact with social media. Fake news workers recruit people called trolls, which are someone paid to go onto social media networks and websites and repeatedly hashtag or spread the news about a certain thing that actually false. These articles, are typically bias, and attempt to change people’s view point based on one topic, such as the election (Timberg). In short, there are many things that revolve around it, which can be very misleading, but by taking the correct safety

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