Social media provides unlimited information, which can be a great resource when it comes to the right providers, and we should take advantage of this word of knowledge, to an extent. We have to remember not everything we read online is true, let’s look at a recent event. A North Carolina man storms into a pizza parlor and opens fire in hopes of saving kids he heard were a part of a sex trafficking ring run by the Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton. Of course when our pizza shooter got to the back of the shop he found no kids, he walked out with his hands up. Now where did this brave man get his information? A common social media site called Reddit. Now nothing against Reddit, they didn’t send this man to open fire on innocent people, the ignorance of some people to believe everything they read is true, did.
False news on social media is an issue I am very passionate about because social media plays a huge role in modern society. Social media is my favorite outlet, sharing something exciting on twitter (@Maggielea7) or posting a nice picture on instagram (also @Maggielea7). If I can very easily just click a button that says “post” then why can’t someone else. It’s that easy. There are also these things called bots that were prevalent during the recent election. What these bots do is they simulate a person with a social media account, they are programed to reword something a politician or a celebrity says and it gets shared millions of times, and people tend to think the more times information is shared the more likely it is to to be true. We also have to watch out for News Blogs, if I can write an article on my opinion and post it online, then why can’t someone else. News stations nowadays have become more narrowcast stations than broadcast stations. If you were to watch Fox they would want to push you to have more conservative views, whereas MSNBC or CNN would want to push you more left winged. It is hard to find truly moderate news, and the media is not helping one bit.
Sense I spend a majority of my time browsing the internet and sharing my life on social media I tend to do background checks on the articles I read. If I find something seriously wrong with a fact I tend to share what I’ve found and either correct the fallacy or ask for clarification. Now not all news that ends up on social media is untrue, we just have to start checking our sources. If something is posted with the source “The New York Times” or “The Washington Post” that information is probably accurate. Whereas if it was cited, “Breitbart” or “Reddit” this is information you should look into and check for any obvious falsities.
