The False News Fallacy Analysis

Through the use of radio, the internet, and social media, numerous amounts of people are able to be connected immediately. With this, comes the notion that users must be careful of what they say and hear because of the immediate impact it has. In “The Fake News Fallacy”, Chen raises awareness to the fake news that is put out onto social media and the websites of unreliable sources. He creates a parallel with this to radio, by using the social hysteria created in the 1930s and how it has foreshadowed what will become of the news in the future. Through the similarities and problems that both encompass, it is easy to see how social media has become what the radio once was.
Chen opens up his article with a story of how Orson Welles, a radio broadcaster, performed “The War of the Worlds” over the radio with only some warning of it being a radio adaptation and that aliens were not actually invading. However, since the radio was one of the largest news platforms back then, many listeners were convinced that their world was truly being invaded. This was only one of the crazy stories since the radio was invented in 1895. Even with the radio being one of the most powerful sources of …show more content…
Now, not only were users able to use these at home, but they could now be apart of them as well, having full engagement from wherever they where at any point in time. The inability for people to fully evaluate what was presented to them did not change, yet it only became worse once unreliable news sources becoming popularized. With no direction through false news on the internet users could only rely on reliable sources but even then, some still continued to turn to fake news, such as, Donald Trump. During his presidential campaign, “fake-news stories...were reported to be flooding social networks” (Chen 2017).Similarly to the irresponsibility of Orson Welles, followers of Trump were mislead by lies