Misinformation in the Digital Age

In Anthony Adornato's "Mobile and Social Media Journalism" book, he dedicates a chapter to fake news and defines it as "a deliberate fabrication of information in order to deceive." While I think it's a good starting point to define fake news I would also argue that a lot of conspiracists spread fake news and a majority of the spread of their information is not meant to deceive, at least not purposefully. They believe from their perspective that they are spreading what is the real truth and so it lacks this intention that Adornato harps on so much. So I would agree that it is a fabrication of information that leads to a lot of residual harm, but I would disagree that there are exceptions to its deliberateness.

I do mostly agree with his checklist of different aspects that allow for something to become fake news which includes:

"Fake news is content that intentionally is false in its entirety or in part, leaves out facts in an effort to distort the truth, misinterprets and misuses data, and takes information out of context." (Adornato, 301)

The only thing I would edit is again intention. While a majority of fake news proponents are doing it to spread misinformation a lot of individuals either do not realize its falsity depending on how you grew up and how misinformation has been taught to someone from a young age or as I mentioned before if the individual is a conspiracy theorist and depending on the circumstantial information they have found they began to convince themselves that their truth is the only truth and should be spread to others.

Currently, a majority of tech companies are in a reactionary position when it comes to misinformation and "fake news" usually including a bot who will note that there are falsities related to the social media post. The issue with this is two-fold. To start, a lot of social media platforms still allow for the publication of misinformation, and a footnote labeling it as false will not be widely seen nor respected by the people who believe the post the most. As well, sites like TruthSocial do not even include any fact-checking software which allows for misinformation to spread around like wildfire.

One of the most straightforward ways to combat this is to create a country-wide mandate on all social media platforms to create a proactive bot software and check the legitimacy of a social media post, preventing it from posting if it is exhibiting false information. This is in an ideal world and the way the bot systems are in place now will not be perfect but it would be a better alternative to the present system in place. In addition, it may be hard due to a lot of Republican's ideas of what the First Amendment is and using the freedom of speech clause to substantiate their ability to continue to post their information as they have in the past.

All of this information begs the question: how should journalists get involved if they even should? The role of the journalist has always been to act as the fourth estate, being a system of checks and balances, and with this new age of misinformation and "fake news" the role of the journalist has expanded to include being a check on the amount of misinformation that is being spread either by politicians or different social media users.

One of the largest solutions to the fake news epidemic is working as a fact checker. There are multiple different fact-checkers that are on X (formerly known as Twitter) and are run by different publications. Keeping up to date with this helps two-fold: it helps to make sure that you as a journalist don't promote misinformation and it allows for an easy way to spread the word about misinformation that was accidentally spread.

This is not perfect and the fight against fake news is an ongoing process that when going down to the systemic level needs a long-term solution. If anyone has found any other solutions that work, let me know in the comments below what you think can be done to mitigate the amount of false information spreading on social media.