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The Causes of Fake News and How to Prevent It Essay
Pages:4 (816 words)
Sources:6
Document Type:Essay
Document:#74986491
Thesis statement: Internet technologies enable the proliferation of fake news, and only education and awareness can curtail the influence fake news has on society.
A. Claim: Prior exposure to a fake news story makes a person more likely to believe in the veracity of the information.
1. Evidence: 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).
2. Evidence: 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).
B. Claim: 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 fake.
1. Evidence: 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.
2. Evidence: A viral post on social media is more likely to be perceived of as true than one that can be fact-checked (Papanastasiou, 2017).
C. Claim: Free speech enables the creation and dissemination of fake news, and free speech can also be the most effective weapon against fake news.
1. Evidence: Librarians are at the forefront of media literacy, and can help stop fake news (Becker, 2016).
2. Evidence: Aggressive and systematic tagging of fake news is essential because anything that is not tagged as “fake” will be perceived of as real (Pennycook & Rand, 2017).
D. Claim: Technological tools can help prevent fake news from proliferating, even though it is technological tools that cause fake news to be so easily propagated.
1. Evidence: There are ways of “curbing social bots,” (Shao, Ciampaglia, Varol, et al, 2017, p. 1).
2. Evidence: Using technology would be “an effective strategy for mitigating the spread of online misinformation,” (Shao, Ciampaglia, Varol, et al, 2017, p. 1).
3. Evidence: To overcome the problems with algorithms, it is also important to target audiences and bots that are geared towards vulnerable populations like “Trump supporters and young adults,” (Pennycook & Rand, 2017, p.…
Sample Source(s) Used
References
Becker, B.W. (2016). The librarian’s information war. Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian 35(4):188-191. DOI: 10.1080/01639269.2016.1284525
Cook, J. (2017). Technology helped fake news. Now technology needs to stop it. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://thebulletin.org/technology-helped-fake-news-now-technology-needs-stop-it11285
Heshmat, S. (2015). What is confirmation bias? Psychology Today. 23 April, 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias
Papanastasiou, Y. (2017). Fake news propagation and detection. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3028354
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