By Aryana St. Marthe
You are growing up in a world where technology is taking over everything, and you have to learn how to navigate it the right way. You are going to see a lot of things and you have to figure out if it’s true or not. One thing you have to know is what fake news and misinformation is and how to detect it. Fake news and misinformation are kind of the same thing; they both basically mean the fake or untrue version of something. A way you can detect fake news is considering the source. According to the Guide to Detecting Fake News article, it states that parents and teachers can help children figure out if something is true or not. Most of the time children look at social media for news and that can easily be the wrong information, so a way we can help is teaching them to dig deeper and look at the source so they can know where it's coming from. Another way you can detect fake news is knowing the difference between opinion and fact. The article states that, “Statements like, ‘the general consensus is’ and ‘Most people believe’ have no place in a news article. A professional journalist knows to back up such statements with facts.” This shows that putting these words in news articles can easily be mistaken as facts. This is why children need to be taught at a young age what the difference is between opinion and fact. The article says that there are many fun activities children can do so they can know the difference without it being “boring.” Fake news and misinformation can be a dangerous thing because things can be said about someone and someone can try to do something about it. For example, in the ‘How misinformation spreads on social media’ article there was an attack in Toronto and the actual description of the attacker was white but, a woman named Natasha Fatah did a little experiment on Twitter to see how fast misinformation can spread. She made two different posts describing the attacker in Toronto. One post said an eyewitness said they saw a white male. The second post said that the attacker was angry and Middle Eastern. You can imagine which one did better on like, reposts, and shares. This shows that misinformation can be harmful because people having biases about different races can cause some trouble and someone is going to believe they need to do something about this person that doesn't exist. There are two factors that go into something going viral, the human side and the technical side. Like I said the bias is an important role in something going viral because we’re more likely to “connect” with content that goes with our beliefs and grievances. This goes with the technical side because after a good amount of people have seen it, liked it, retweeted it, and favorited it then in the Twitter algorithm it will make it for more people to see it. This whole cycle put together can be the worst thing because just like that misinformation is all around and people are actually believing it. According to the article, “How misinformation spreads on social media” it states, “At its worst, this cycle can turn social media into a kind of confirmation bias machine, one perfectly tailored for the spread of misinformation.” This explains exactly what I said that this whole cycle can easily spread something untrue or false news. Something can be done to stop it, like Twitter promoting police and government accounts so that accurate information can be said so everyone will most likely believe it because it's from the right source. Some other news that can be mistaken as real that you should also watch out for is satirical news or satire news. Satire news is literary that involves a balance of criticism and humor. Sometimes when people make satirical news it can seem very true, but it's not. Satire news is mostly meant to be funny not to be taken seriously. Although satirical news can be sarcastic it is also something you have to be careful of because some people begin to take it too far and make up stories that seem very real and people actually believe them. And that can be dangerous for some people. Satire news can also be mistaken for fake news because fake news is meant for people to believe it and try to do something about it. Satire news is something that is meant for fun, something that's sarcastic or something that doesn’t really matter. That's why no matter what you are reading you should always check the background to see if it's true or not. To help you in the future I will say to look and read everything very carefully because you never know if someone is lying to you or not. Always check the background of every news article or post that you see on social media because social media is the main spot where fake news is born. To conclude, fake news is everywhere and you have to be careful and look out for it because you don't want to read something and be so angry about it just to find out it's not even true. Use all the information I gave in this letter to go along with you in life because there is going to be a lot of fake news and it's going to be your job to figure out the truth.
2 Comments
Lynn Girven
4/24/2022 04:53:46 am
Well done! It is frightening how even where you live, can determine the kind of news you are exposed to seeing. (The Social Dilemna is an eye-opening documentary)
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4/26/2022 07:54:11 am
i liked that this articual was a note to someone how to deal with future things
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