The words “Fake news” has been around for a while. To understand what the words really mean, I googled; according to dictionary.com, fake news refers to “false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared or distributed for the purpose of generating revenue, or promoting or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company, etc.”
Today, I would like to examine an article from Pew Research Center. In this article, the authors addressed the data that was collected from December 1st to 4th, 2016 over surveys.
“Majority say fake news has left Americans confused about basic facts”
A total of 88% of the survey participants believed that fake news left them confused about basic facts. Only 11% of the participants believed they did not confuse basic facts with reported news. Confusion is likely not the resting state people would like to be at; it is important to make sure people are not left confused after reading news. The purpose of reading news is to obtain new information and facts, and not to get confused.
“Belief that fake news causes confusion shared widely”
Several groups were classified together to see how different group felt about fake news confusing them; participants were grouped by gender, age, education, income, ethnicity, and political affiliation. Unsurprisingly, regardless of the group, more than 80% of the people falls into the range of “some” or “a great deal” when it comes to the confusion caused by fake news. Notably, people with some college or college degrees reported to be more confused than people with an education level or less. This is rather interesting as many may think education is supposedly “helpful” to us in identifying and isolating fake facts from real facts. However, that is not necessarily the case here; people seem to be confused regardless of education.
“Majority are confident in their ability to recognize fake news”
Interestingly, despite most people felt confusion from fake news, most people, at 84%, either felt very confident or somewhat confident in recognizing fake news.
“About a third say they often see made-up political news online; 51% say they see inaccurate news”
The general trend indicates that people seem to believe fake news falls under “not fully” accurate more than “completely made up”. In this case, I agree that fake news falls under “not fully accurate” more. Often times, news media outlets either omit important/essential details or include untrue details to make the readers believe in one side that they want their audience to believe. An example of a news article that is “fake” but contains information that is completely true can be found in my first blog.
“About one in four report sharing fabricated news — whether aware at the time or not”
Almost a quarter (23%) of the participants believe they have shared fake political news to people. In fact, some people shared the news knowingly. This shows the mindset of those people: want others to believe in what they believe, even if it involves deceiving others.
Overall, I would like to highlight something important. According to the survey, education does not seem to help people identify fake news. I personally believe the first step to learn factual information is to avoid false information. By identifying fake news and then avoid it, people will have better exposure to real news or factual information. By integrating courses that help people identify fake news into the education system, people will be better prepared to avoid fake news.
