Fake news is challenging to spot to the “untrained eye”. Recognizing that the information being spread is not completely true is important if you want to keep your facts straight, but how can you do that when the information is so convincing? How is it that these articles are so convincing in the first place?
Authors of these articles are great at using information to their advantage to push their own agenda. They often use previous stories as inspiration for their works, for example, Jestin Coler of Disinfomedia states that “stories […] work because they fit into exiting right-wing conspiracy theories.” If people already believe someone is bad, it’s likely they will believe when a story comes out about that person doing something wrong. This is how fake news spreads so rapidly, and through this we get a whole group of people that are misinformed without even recognizing it themselves.
Comments