Share

The rise of social media has drastically changed the nature of journalistic reporting, giving rise to so-called citizen journalists. 

In a 2014 study of journalists in the United States, 40% of participants claimed they rely on social media as a source, with over 20% depending on microblogs to collect facts. From this, the conclusion can be drawn that breaking news nowadays often stems from user-generated content, including videos and pictures posted online in social media. However, though 69.2% of the surveyed journalists agreed that social media allowed them to connect to their audience, only 30% thought it had a positive influence on news credibility. In addition to this, a 2021 study done by Pew Research Center shows that 86% of Americans are getting their news from digital devices. 

“Fake news” is also deliberately untruthful information, which can often spread quickly on social media or by means of fake news websites. News cannot be regarded as “fake”, but disinformation rather.It is often published to intentionally mislead readers to ultimately benefit a cause, organization or an individual. A glaring example was the proliferation of fake news in social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and lies have been circulated under the guise of news reports to benefit specific candidates. 

Many critics blamed Facebook for the spread of such material. Its news feed algorithm, in particular, was identified by Vox as the platform where the social media giant exercise billions of editorial decisions every day. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and TikTok are distributors of disinformation or “fake news”.Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has acknowledged the company’s role in this problem: in a testimony before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing on 20 April 2018, he said:

It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.Readers can often evaluate credibility of news by examining the credibility of the underlying news organization.The phrase was popularized and used by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign to discredit what he perceived as negative news coverage of his candidacy and then the presidency.

In some countries, including Turkey, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Montenegro, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Somalia journalists have been threatened or arrested for allegedly spreading fake news about the COVID-19 pandemic.On 4 March 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish “knowingly false information” about the Russian armed forces and their operations, leading to some media outlets in Russia to stop reporting on Ukraine or shutting their media outlet. 

As of December 2022, more than 4,000 people were prosecuted under “fake news” laws in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

 

Photo Credit: Shutterstock