Social media has become a very important source of information when it comes to news, polls, opinions and reviews. Due to the ease of accessibility and little to no cost, social media has become the breeding ground for fake news and misinformation. Large amounts of content generated by users float around social media which lacks credibility and quality. A recent study done in 2019 by Pew Research Center found that about half of the US adults get news from Facebook. Also, the one-sided and inaccurate news is the biggest problem many Americans say they face when they access the news from social media networks.
There is so much information available in the news feed of our social media accounts that we are engulfed in our own confirmation bias. We tend to share the memes which are at the topmost of our news feed ignoring it’s quality and credibility. Following the herd mentality, we also reshare and retweet the memes going by the popularity of the meme and its social influence. There are bots which play a major role in the message amplification as they automatically upvote and share the message which leads to the popularity and subsequent sharing of messages by users.
In a joint study done by University of Warwick and Indiana University Bloomington’s Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe), the researchers are using data mining, artificial intelligence and simulation models to find the cognitive vulnerabilities of social media users. They are also using analytical and machine learning tools to find social media manipulation. A simulation model called EchoDemo was developed which explored how the users of social media accounts with their own confirmation bias follow the like-minded people and unfriend those whose opinions do not align with them.This way they make their own social chambers by segregating themselves into a group with the same bias. Botometer a machine learning algorithm developed by OSoMe is a public tool which extracts features from Twitter account and compares it with already identified bots to give Twitter account a score for it’s likely use of automation. There are also apps developed in OSoMe which detect the credibility of the news feed in social media, how the existing meme spreads through Twitter, keep track of tweets and the accounts posting them.
The age of digital information and the low cost of the internet has given rise to the multiple sources that are disseminating the information easily. Therefore the manipulation of information, the ease of anonymity and the lack of clarity has become viable which has led to the diffusion of junk-news and spam.
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It’s extremely scary how much bots have invaded our social media without us even recognizing it. As technology progresses, I think one day we’ll have bots that are able to pass the Turing test and become indistinguishable from real human beings. Already, Google has a call function in where you are speak without a bot that sounds exactly like a human, down to the little gestures and pauses that indicts that we are thinking. I always try to double check my resources and encourage my students to do the same, but it seems like there are always bots that are one step ahead of the curve and can redirect thought via fake news. Do you have any tools that you use to check the validity of the material?
Hi Wynn,
I usually tell my students to check the URL and the domain name of the website once they visit a website. This help them to understand how to check for the reliability of the resource. Other than that I do not know of any tool that checks the validity of the material. I would appreciate if you can share the tools which you use with your students.
Social media and the dissemination of false information have become a very major issue especially in the past few years. Even reliable news sources are not immune to disseminating false or ‘inaccurate’ news. Here are a couple of examples…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/12/03/abc-news-apologizes-for-serious-error-in-trump-report-suspends-brian-ross-for-four-weeks/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cbs-news-italian-hospital/
The second example is particularly interesting as it gives an example where there is ‘partial’ truth, and how a different perspective can make all the difference. Not sure if this link will work, but if it does, this image illustrates the point of perspective perfectly.
https://wl-brightside.cf.tsp.li/resize/728x/jpg/2cc/c20/1223a75edd8edbdd42a433d1fc.jpg
Hi Marlis,
I agree that the reputable news sources may also spread the unreliable news. Although the news channel might be biased, professional journalists have to back up their news with some evidence. People spreading news on social media channels are not accountable and answerable to anyone, so the credibility of the news on social media decreases tremendously. Therefore, we do need to distinguish between a biased reporting against fake news; a subtle yet important distinction.Below is the link to the news blog explaining media bias and fake news.
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/the-carillon/local/COLUMN-Think-Again—Media-bias-is-not-fake-news-573659901.html
Here is another one:
The Difference Between “Fake News” and Media Bias. | by Jason Perno | Medium