OK, I know you don't want to, but try to remember back to the fall of 2016.
Remember when reality Tv superstar Donald Trump was operating for chairman? How about the moment you realise he might actually be electable?
In my social circle, at least, that realization was met with disbelief — as well as some legitimate panic. And as more of my friends started freaking out, I noticed a meme being shared over and over by them on social media.
In it, Trump on Tv, in all his ‘8 0s industrialist “glory, ” seems next to this quote:
“If I were to run, I'd run as a Republican. They're the dumbest group of voters in the country. They love anything on Fox News. I could lie and they'd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.”
Image via Rude& Rotten Republicans.
There are various versions of this meme, but I must have ensure it at least a dozen period across Facebook and Twitter.
I assume we all know by now that it's a fake quote. But it was just as fake several years ago as it is now. My friends who information technology shared are smart-alecky people. Why would they share something without fact-checking it first?
After all, my friends aren't like General Flynn spreading that Pizzagate conspiracy theory about a child sex ring being run by the Clintons out of the nonexistent cellar of a pizza parlor.( This was before he was hired as national security advisor, by the way .)
Image via Politifact.
My friends also aren't Sandy Hook deniers clinging to the repulsive idea that the kids, mothers, teachers, administrators, and community members in Newtown, Connecticut, were “crisis actors” who faked a mass shooting so the government could take away everyone's firearms.
An Oxford study procuredthat conservatives are more likely than liberals to spread misinformation, but no one is immune.
So, how does this stuff get shared so widely?
We live in a world where fake news spreads like wildfire, while the truth only … smolders.
Last week, MIT released research studies finding that fake news travellings parent, faster, and deeper than true tales do.
The study writers looked at approximately 126,000 tweets from 2006 to 2017 that were shared more than 4.5 million times by about 3 million people. They determined whether stories is correct or false based on agreement between six different independent fact-checking organizations, and also looked at whether narratives were being shared by automated bots or by humans.
What did they find? False information was 70% more likely to be retweeted than true stories. Ouch.
The authors found that it took the truth about six days as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people, and that fake narratives tended to reach far more people. Accurate stories rarely built their style to more than 1,000 people, whereas the top 1% of false narratives regularly spread to between 1,000 and 100,000.
The study also found that automated accounts actually share false and true stories at the same rate, which means that humans — not bots — are responsible for the proliferation of fake news.
Ugh. Let's do better, humans.
Apparently, the truth is simply too boring to share.
One way the study writers explain these results is that people like novelty. Real news tales are picked up by most major news outlets, and if they're doing journalism right, those stories aren't sensationalized. The truth is everywhere, which removes the intrigue; false tales are alluring because they're new, arousing, and unique.
Fake news also frequently has a strong political or ideological bent. People are drawn to tales that confirm their biases and elicit emotional reactions, which explains both the meme with the fake Trump quote and the preoccupation with Pizzagate.
It's pretty easy to cover the bases of novelty, bias, and feeling when you construct stuff up out of thin air.
But we don't have to fall prey to sensationalism or our personal biases.
It may seem impossible to construct people realise they're spreading fake news, but I refuse to give up hope that most people can discern the difference between fact and fiction.
I think it boils down to all of us pacifying down a bit and espousing — and sharing — slower stories.
When the news cycle of the 2016 election reached peak hysterium, I did a little experiment: I tried out the most reliable, unbiased, factual news sources I could find. No 24 -hour cable news channels. No outlets with a clear agenda. I scoured Media Bias/ Fact Check to find sources with the most reliable reporting and the least amount of bias.
I also constricted my television news watching to C-Span and PBS News Hour. And you know what ? It was surprisingly unexciting . Even with all of the upheaval going on in our politics, hearing accurate reporting largely unfiltered and without commentary was, frankly, reasonably boring.
But boring news is not a bad thing.
It's a wonder how someone can complain so much about fake news while also actively promoting it. Photo from the Daily Show's Trump Twitter Library via Scott Olson/ Getty.
We can all do our component to uphold the truth by making use of various fact-checking websites like Politifact, FactCheck, and Snopes. Every meme or connect from a source we're unsure of should be run through these checks. There are people out there doing the excavating run, so we should take advantage of that.
But most importantly, we need to check our own reactions to narratives. According to the MIT study, people's emotional responses to real tales and fake narratives differ. The writers noted that “false narratives inspired dread, disgust, and surprise in replies” while “true tales inspired anticipation, sadness, exhilaration, and trust.” Taking note of how we feel when we see a tale can give us a clue as to its reliability.
Check memes and narratives. Check your reactions to them. Check your biases.
We may not be able to stop the spread of fake news, but we can definitely keep from spreading it ourselves.
Read more: www.upworthy.com
