In the height of stressful times, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine combined with the lingering presence of the pandemic, it can be hard to know what is real and what isn’t. Unfortunately, some people are using the stress from the war to their advantage, whether it be for personal gain or the spread of propaganda. This is effective because “disinformation spreads because it plays on our emotions and our biases.” One such instance of Fake News that has appeared from the war is a tweet that showed a photo of “the remains of the once famous Ukrainian resort hotel Peace” that had been attacked “by Russian bombers” that was supposedly posted by CNN on Twitter. The post was soon debunked to be fabricated by Reuters due to the tweet having “square corners instead of the rounded corners typical of Twitter post photos.” Additionally, CNN has admitted to never posting the tweet, which was verified by USA TODAY after they did not find any record of the tweet on the official CNN Twitter account. The photo showing a “destroyed” Ukrainian hotel was actually an image of “the Serbian resort Zvonachka-Banya, awaiting reconstruction” which was easily discovered by reverse image searching. Fear is a strong emotion that is very easy to feed off of, and people who post Fake News during stressful times know that. Always remember to research if a post or article is real before reposting it for others to see!
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