Fake news became a coined term as our current President entered the Oval Office, and has become a part of American’s day-to-day lingo. Resonation is a huge reason that misinformation that is what we classify as fake news, spreads so quickly.
Most people look at the total number of shares and comments and reactions for one piece of content, rather than the content itself. People assume if that many people have seen the post and engaged with it, it must be true- but this is not the case. As Silverman pointed out, Facebook doesn’t give us a lot of data to begin with, making source and fact checking even harder for readers. So readers tend to lean on the engagement of the post to determine its reliability.
It was also notable to point out that during the most critical time of the election, three months prior to votes being castes, fake news stories has spiked. Not only were numbers tremendously up, but stories were so pro-Trump or they were anti-Clinton it was overwhelmingly distressing.
We are living in the most divided political landscape since the Vietnam and Civil Rights Era, and some could even say it is worse now. We are always going to be divided in simple ways, at school, work, in our communities we take sides and defend our positions. We will always inevitably sector ourselves out into different tribes in life based on our morals, values, and beliefs. But President Trump has monopolized on the “divide and conquer” philosophy since putting himself in the running for leader of the free world.
One news media outlet even said, “The lists of Trump tactics and topics on this strategy are long. Race, economic status, gender, political party, social issues and so on have all been on his menu and often in ugly ways.”
Given that we are entering the most unprecedented time in history most of us will ever live to see, I think this says a lot. When we enter a state of crisis and panic, we are so quick to believe anything that any media platform is putting out. Whereas what we should do, is inform ourselves to the best of our abilities, and then form an opinion, rather than the other way around. Or else, fake news might kill us before a virus ever does.
From Nicole's Perspective 