Grove English Communication Ⅲ
LESSON 16
Spot Fake News
“A lion has escaped from the zoo near my home in Kumamoto,” said a social media alert posted shortly after the devastating earthquake in 2016. A photo of a lion on the loose was even attached to it. The alert was retweeted at least 20,000 times in the first hour. But it turned out to be fake.
Today, fake news is everywhere, and false stories are easier than ever to generate and spread on social media. They often get more shares, likes, and comments than factually accurate news stories. In past decades, we trusted established newspapers, magazines, and radio or TV news programs. But with the development of large-scale social media, trust in the mainstream media has been declining sharply over the past twenty years.
According to a recent study in the U.S., most teens cannot spot fake news. They accept social media headlines and photos without doubt. They fail to distinguish between sponsored advertisements and real news stories. They easily judge the credibility of a news-related message by the attached photos or videos, not by its source.
Advertising on social media is dependent on the number of page views. Websites have “clickbait” titles or headlines in order to get visitors to click them for more page views. These sites just need your clicks to generate advertising revenue. As such, social media have often faced fierce criticism over the amount of fake news they generate.
All news media today might be more or less biased. The ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media is called media literacy. It is an essential skill we all need to develop in order not to be misled by the huge amount of false, inaccurate information around us.