JOURNAL OF DIGITAL LEARNING VOLUME 3, 2021
WHY SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT FAKE NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA?
CONTRIBUTORS 2
05. Y O N AT H A N S I L E S H I , L O W E R S I X T H 06. LUKE LANGRIDGE, REMOVE FORM 07. GABRIEL BORELLI, YEAR 6 08. DEIMIS SUKYS, LOWER SIXTH 10. KEVIN XU, REMOVE FORM
P R E FA C E In this, the third volume of the Bedford School
for publication in the journal including for the first
Journal of Digital Learning, pupils consider the phe-
time, one from the Prep School. The essays are arti-
nomenon of Fake News and its influence on our use of
culate, well-argued and controversial. I hope that you
social media. In this volume, five essays were chosen
enjoy reading them.
E D I T E D B Y D R A L B I N W A L L A C E , D I R E C T O R O F D I G I TA L L E A R N I N G
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WHY SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT FAKE NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA? YONATHAN SILESHI, LOWER SIXTH
The internet has made the ability to share information quicker and easier than ever before. However, finding misinformation on the internet can spread fake news like wildfire. There have been many examples of just one person being able to post on Facebook or making a tweet with misinformation accessible to the whole world. This can divide people, to perpetuate stereotypes, and to start creating hate between us. No matter what you try to do to avoid it, there is always going to be one person that stumbles across the information, and because the internet has made access to information easier, it is tempting not to be bothered to validate information. People can take posts at face-value and make it their “truth”. This starts a chain reaction. The initial person that viewed the post then shares the misinformation, more and more people have access to that and then make it their own “truth”. This sometimes leads to people starting hashtags to spread “news”, people organizing a local gathering to spread the misinformation, or even spreading to protests and riots if enough people are fooled by this misinformation. This may put many lives at risk for something that is not true. It could affect elections and persuade people to do the wrong things. An example of this is in the UK, where some racist British people believed that immigrants were coming to the UK in masses to steal jobs of “British workers”. They also believed that most immigrants are illegal immigrants that did not deserve to be in the UK. This may have started when they saw a post about illegal immigration, then twisted the narrative, and shared it with people who in turn spread it across the UK. This can cause discrimination against innocent, legal families that did immigrate to the UK, causing suffering and leading to many targeted attacks towards those people. Therefore, from what was a simple post that was spreading misinformation, many people believed that to be
true, as they wanted it to be true and spread this hate around the internet until it became a bigger problem where people were getting hurt. Another example is shown in the Donald Trump election against Joe Biden, where it was incorrectly believed that the polls were rigged when the nation found out that Trump was losing the race for president, hence leading to many riots, with Trump supporters on YouTube and Twitter to ‘spread awareness’ which ultimately lead to the raid at the Capitol which was strong evidence of how fake news can affect many. Although regulators are trying to have people constantly monitor their websites, and flag accounts and posts that have fake news and misinformation on them, the best prevention against viewing fake news is to make sure teenagers especially, can identify what is fake news and encourage them to do further research without blindly tweeting about the information when it is not real.
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WHY SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT FAKE NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA? LUKE LANGRIDGE, REMOVE FORM
We should worry about fake news because fake news can influence people’s actions, and some of those are likely to be harmful. Fake news can also alter political views and opinions on different topics which are just wrong. Fake news such as saying someone has just committed a crime. His or her friends may disagree with their actions which may result in the breaking of their relationship, and even if they say they did not do it, the influencers on social media will manipulate the outcome of the friendship when it should not have anything to do with it. Fake news such as those involving Donald Trump shifted many people’s opinions, and his decision to repost fake news resulted him being banned on both FaceBook and Twitter as well as many other social media platforms. Therefore, we should worry about fake news as it influences a large group of people very easily on social media and with platforms such as TikTok, it can be spread very quickly and be believed very easily. Although
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most fake news is relatively harmless, it is usually a slight change in wording or tone which makes it believable, which is why we should worry about fake news on social media. Fake news can alter so many peoples’ lives and the reason why it is so dangerous is because it is so easy to create, especially with the prevalence of “deep fake”, and even just a single Instagram post can reach the news headlines and therefore can change people’s lives so quickly as it can be very believable. We should worry about this as it is increasing in popularity and increasing in response and believability, and decreasing in the time taken to create fake news. How can we change this? We can’t, but social media companies can limit the creation of fake news although this takes a lot of money and time which they need for other things, like finding solutions to hackers and racism. We can also fact check “news” for a serious event, and if we can’t find a reliable source of information we should be sceptical until we can find it.
WHY SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT FAKE NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA? GABRIEL BORELLI, YEAR 6 Social media has changed the way we communicate in our modern, digital world. It has revolutionised the concept of freedom of information and brought with it the issue of fake news. Fake news tends to be more interesting, and captures our attention easier than stories in mainstream media. But unlike those, there is very little fact-checking before publishing. Mainstream media such as newspapers rely on editors to review the stories. Editors are held accountable for the accuracy of the stories, which is reflected in the reputations of the newspapers. Editors must ensure stories tell all sides of a controversy before making headlines, online or printed. Fake news are frequently one-sided, difficult to verify and linked to anonymous social media accounts. Establishing who said what about whom becomes nearly impossible. Lack of accountability, however, does not stop fake messages from spreading. In social media, it is the number of likes that determines if a story is “true”, not the reputation of the author. Take as an example the case of Nutella, a brand of hazelnut spread owned by the food giant Ferrero Roche. Nutella has been accused by social media of causing cancer and killing orangutangs. In 2016, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) released a report alleging that chocolate spreads could cause cancer because of one ingredient: palm oil. Supermarkets in Italy started to remove Nutella from their shelves as a precaution. EFSA also reported that palm oil is used in hundreds of
other products, from chocolate bars to baby milk formulas, but that escaped the fake news posts and so did the extreme consumption levels that could represent a risk. In 2017, palm oil was used in another fake news campaign, this time associating Nutella to the decimation of orangutans by farming the ingredient. One of Nutella’s rival brands created this story which permeated heavily in social media, despite Ferrero Rocher being accredited by the WWF and Greenpeace for the ecological sourcing of ingredients. Ferrero won a court battle against its rival as the fake news could not be verified, but the social media raging lasts until today, and does not mention a lawsuit. Fake news aside, in 2019 the BBC ran a story challenging Nutella for the use of child labour in hazelnut farms. Unlike its fake news counterparts, this story has a clearly identified author, comes from a reputable source, and listens to Nutella’s defence in an interview with one of its senior managers. You probably have seen the fake news postings on social media related to Nutella causing cancer and killing orangutans, but the serious and real issue of child labour has not attracted many likes. Our world will never be the same after social media. We should not forget its benefits but try to deal with its darker sides ourselves. Fake news is an issue that requires our help. Challenging what we see and read in social media posts before sharing with others will help stem the flow of unverifiable stories. We are the editors of our own posts, let’s get to work!
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WHY SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT FAKE NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA? DEIMIS SUKYS, LOWER SIXTH FORM
We live in a society where clicks and engagements sometimes trump truth. Imagine you are on your phone, browsing in an attempt to stay up-to-date with current affairs. You see a myriad of different texts, posts, stories, and gifs. “Wait a second… Gifs?” - I hear you ask. A recent YouGov study concluded that 23% of Brits get their news through Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The statistic, however, also factors in those who use other sources of news alongside social media. Nevertheless, 23% is still a mind-blowing statistic, and we must understand the danger of using only social media as a source of news and we must recognise its ability to distort news as a tool for manipulation and, quite often, a tool to use for the detriment of others. This published distortion of news is often referred to as ‘fake news’.
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You may be asking: “Why is using social media as a source of news, on its own, dangerous?”. And to answer this question, we must first identify why groups and individuals might use social media to spread fake news. A worrying article published in the Harvard Business Review by the Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE), Sinan Aral, informed readers that fake news is being shared more efficiently and much further than real news. However, this comes as no surprise; fake news is often specifically designed to reinforce our preconceived notions and, thus, we are likely not to subject the ‘news’ to scrutiny. Readers experience a release of dopamine when reading something they agree with, or enjoy, which often triggers them to press ‘like’ and to share with friends, family, or (even worse) their followers. Not only does this mean that fake news is being spread manually, but
it also stimulates the algorithms of social media platforms to recommend the fake news to a wider audience. As a result of this, the fake news is likely to be believed by a higher number of people; which can be incredibly dangerous, depending on what the ‘news’ is. An example of dangerous, and sickening, fake news would be racist conspiracy theories relating to COVID-19 shared by the far-right across Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram. A study conducted by Imran Awan, a Professor of Criminology at Birmingham City University, and Roxana KhanWilliams, found that the Islamophobic fake news being spread by the far-right has resulted in
physical hate-crimes being committed against Muslims throughout the pandemic. This report demonstrates that, through the use of fake news, groups and individuals are able to manipulate others into committing horrific acts. Some may question the legitimacy of the claim that one could be inspired to commit heinous acts against others by simply reading hateful fake news, however, it is incredibly important to note that constant exposure to fake news (regardless of topic) is likely to shape the way one thinks and feels. To avoid constant exposure to any type of fake news, I believe it is important to consume news from a wide range of sources – not just one.
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WHY SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT FAKE NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA? KEVIN XU, REMOVE FORM
Fake news is what we can see every day on social media. But what is fake news, and why should worry about it? Fake news is content that is not factual. This includes stories that are circulated online –usually via social media but also in the press –to make people believe something untrue, or stories that may be true in part but have been exaggerated or distorted to make the reader adopt a certain point of view. Fake news is not new, but the internet has provided an international platform for the sharing of made-up stories. For example, Online posts have claimed to reveal various “cures” for the new coronavirus. Some are benign, like eating boiled garlic, while others are potentially dangerous, like drinking chlorine dioxide, an industrial bleach. However, neither will cure the virus. Types Of fake news include: Satire–made-up stories that aren’t meant to be taken seriously, written to poke fun of the news or famous people Clickbait–eye-catching but misleading headlines, designed to get people to click on links to make money or views for a website Propaganda–false facts which are written to promote a political agenda or a set of ideas Mistakes–sometimes accidents can happen, but a trusted source will always correct errors in their stories and admit when they have got things wrong. Disinformation–fake or misleading stories created and shared deliberately, often by a writer who might have a financial or political motive, e.g. propaganda Misinformation–this also means fake or misleading stories, but in this case the stories may not have been deliberately created or shared with the
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intention to mislead. Sharing stories that are untrue can have a big impact on public safety, on democratic elections, and on a person’s reputation. Conspiracy theories claiming that 5G technology was helping to transmit coronavirus were dismissed universally as “complete rubbish” by scientists -but not before they were shared by social media accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers. Spreading fake news can cause children to feel stupid when their friends point out that they have fallen for a trick. Studies have shown that many people cannot tell what news is fake and, what news is real. This can create confusion and misunderstanding about important social and political issues. There are many fake and misleading news stories related to medical treatments and major diseases like cancer or diabetes. Trusting these false stories could lead you to make decisions that may be harmful to your health. A Pew Research Center study found that those on the right and the left of the political spectrum have different ideas about the definition of 'fake news', "The Pew study suggests that fake-news panic, rather than driving people to abandon ideological outlets and the fringe, may actually be accelerating the process of polarization: It’s driving consumers to drop some outlets, to simply consume less information overall, and even to cut out social relationships." Therefore, it is important for people to seek out news with as little bias as humanly possible. News services like AP News and Reuters strive to provide accurate, neutral coverage of major events. Overall, fake news is very dangerous. It is important that we identify the fake news, without being deceived by it.
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