The Allure of Fake News in America Essay

Over the past few years, the phrase “fake news” has become a household word in the United States. Like the term “propaganda” during the Cold War era, “fake news” has come to connote the manipulation of the public through misleading or frankly false information. Fake news can be spread by anyone with a Twitter account or Facebook page, making it far too easy for fake news to proliferate. In fact, the mainstream media can even spread fake news, knowingly or not. As beneficial as social media might be to the democratic sharing of information, social media also facilitates fake news. One of the reasons why fake news has an allure is prior exposure. When a person reads a story that resonates with them, they tend to believe that story to be true without going through the process of fact checking or verification. The phenomenon of confirmation bias ensures that individuals will share a news item if it coincides with their personal or political beliefs. Another reason why fake news can be alluring is that people like to join a crowd and get caught up in mob mentality. If enough people share a news item, it goes “viral,” making it seem even more credible due to its popularity. In other words, people are prone to believing a story just because it is popular: a phenomenon known as the ad populum logical fallacy. The problem with fake news is that it leads to ignorance and undermines democracy. Confirmation bias and mob mentality promote the proliferation of fake news, and only education and awareness can curtail the influence fake news has on society.

One of the main reasons why fake news proliferates is that people tend to believe things that they are already familiar with, or which confirms their prejudices. Prior exposure to a fake news story makes a person more likely to believe in the veracity of the information. The prior exposure phenomenon is a type of confirmation bias, whereby “we pick out those bits of data that make us feel good because they confirm our prejudices,” (Heshmat, 2015, p. 1). New information might create cognitive dissonance, a conflict between what we believe to be true and what is actually true based on science or reason. Donald Trump has frequently referred to factual evidence as “fake news,” a clear example of how people cling to false beliefs because they do not feel comfortable with change. Trump “has labeled accurate news reporting as ‘fake news’ or spread false information himself, while at the same time accusing the media of being ‘fake’ or ‘dishonest,’” (Kiely, 2018, p. 1). Many people are starting to have trouble telling the difference between fake and real news because of poor leadership and a lack of ability to think critically and practice media literacy. In fact, just a one-time exposure to a fake news item on a social media platform like Facebook increases the likelihood that a person will believe the fake news story, with the effects lasting as long as a week (Pennycook, Cannon, & Rand, 2017). Fake news is sinister and difficult to curtail because even just one exposure to a fake news story can reinforce prejudicial or irrational beliefs.

Mob mentality is at work with fake news, as research shows a viral post is more likely to be perceived as trustworthy even when it is provably false. Becker (2016) notes that the proliferation of fake news is akin to a mob mentality, whereby people believe what they read simply because it is popular. The willingness to believe something just because it is popular is a type of logical fallacy known as ad populum. People may be afraid to disagree with their peers or with the general public, perhaps because they doubt their own ability to think critically or because they are afraid of being socially isolated. As a result of mob mentality, a viral post on social media is more likely to be perceived of as true than one that can be fact-checked (Papanastasiou, 2017). Because social media algorithms also contribute to the proliferation of fake news stories, curbing the influence of fake news has become a daunting, if not totally impossible, task. Social media works on the principles of viral sharing, whereby the more a post is liked or shared, the more that same post will be disseminated. Real and truthful news stories or research papers will not show up in news feeds. If people do not see the real information in their social media feeds, all they have access to is fake news.

Fake news is also spread because Americans believe in unbridled free speech: a gross distortion of the First Amendment. “The fact that fake news is free speech does not nullify the danger it poses for open discourse, freedom of opinion, or democratic governance,” (Nossel, 2017, p. 1). Just as Americans have distorted the Second Amendment, with some claiming that they have the right to have and use semi-automatic weapons, Americans have also begun to believe that free speech entitles them to wanton ignorance. Trump is the bastion of ignorance in America, and has tried to distort the meaning of fake news itself. As Borchers (2017) points out, Trump believes the term “applies to just about every piece of information he doesn't like,” (p. 1). Fake news is not news that makes people uncomfortable, but news that can be proven false. The freedom of speech provision in the Constitution does allow people to say whatever they want, and even get that material to go viral. Given the nature of digital media, it is technically impossible to stop false information and misinformation. It is, however, possible to find a middle ground. Without restricting free speech, Americans can take greater…