Fake News Analysis

“Fake news,” is definitely becoming a major issue in today’s society. People are consistently using Facebook as a source for everyday news. However, the news on these sites are not monitored by people, instead, Facebook uses an algorithm to determine which news is trending, and posts it to their “trending topics” area on the website. People then take this information, internalize it, and make decisions based on their thoughts. This particular controversy especially effects millennials, who get the majority of their news from social networking. This is especially scary because most people read only the title of the article, some read the first paragraph, and even fewer read the entire article. Taking into consideration the amount of people …show more content…
No. In general, this topic is definitely in the “now” and can be seen as a prevalent issue. If most people who would normally get their information from online sources, specifically receiving headliners from websites like Facebook and Google do read these headlines, but don’t delve into the source itself, it becomes a very dangerous and grey area of information collecting. In some cases, the sources are completely false and in others, aspects of the original story have been skewed to fit the perspective of the group generating the content’s message. Even when people watch TV and read newspapers, they will scroll to a headline in which they find interesting. The big separation between TV and print journalism, as compared to internet journalism, is that many sources don’t have an editing staff to monitor those articles going out, not do they want them, because they are furthering the agenda of that particular source. Not only is that problem, but the issue in regards to advertising also left room for plenty of error. Many of the “click-baiters” don’t care about the legitimacy of the content in their articles, but rather the ability of generating clicks from users who find their headline attractive, generating ad revenue for their organization. With companies like Facebook and Google finally taking action, hopefully this issue will be fixed, however, I feel like the problem will take quite some time to be fully resolved, if ever. There are just too many websites producing this false content, and even will a fully staffed office of human editorial staff, there would still be articles that get pushed through. For instance, an article could have a majority of their article be credible, and then insert their personal content, altering the credibility of the content far into the article.