FAKENEWS

their ridiculous headlines: “Woman gives birth to alien baby” or “Elvis spotted alive.”

The tabloids have not gone anywhere, and neither has fake news. Instead, it has found a cozy home on the Internet where it has evolved to be indistinguishable from legitimate news. Social media has enabled information to be spread faster and further than in years past, but that also applies to lies that could potentially be damaging and dangerous.

According to the Pew Research Center, Americans are more likely to believe social media has a negative impact on democracy. Additionally, across the 19 countries it surveyed in 2022, there was a general belief that social media made it easier for bad actors to manipulate information, even in countries that had a more positive opinion on social media.

It is still being debated whether or not social media companies have an obligation to control the information hosted on their websites. The Biden administration has expressed that it wants tech companies to be held accountable for spreading misinformation, but the companies, notably Facebook, have been reluctant to accept responsibility.

Michael Martinez is an assistant professor in the school of journalism and electronic media whose research focuses on media law and ethics. He says he believes social media companies do have an obligation to stem the flow of false information.

“They have an ethical responsibility,” Martinez said. “I don’t think they have a legal responsibility. They’re private entities, so the government, from a legal standpoint, can’t regulate them.”

Martinez explained there are currently efforts by legislators to enact a measure of control over social media content, especially when it is used as a public forum or an instrument of communication by a public figure.

While some platforms such as YouTube and

The same Pew study also concluded that people worldwide believe fake news to be a major global threat, second only to climate change.

Guy Harrison, another professor in the school of JEM, concurred with that viewpoint.

“If climate change is our biggest threat globally, I’d say fake news is the biggest threat to our country and our society,” Harrison said. “We make important decisions based off the information we’re exposed to.”

“If people are tuned into outlets that are spreading inaccurate and harmful things, I think it legitimately spells doom for our democracy.”

Harrison points to fake news’s role in the past two American election cycles to illustrate his point. In particular, he focuses on fake news’s role in stoking the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“So many people buy into the inaccurate things they read, and it can skew how they vote,” Harrison said. “It also gives them a false sense of ‘oh, I have to do my American duty and rebel and storm the Capitol,’ and it leads to violence.”

“I don’t see events like Jan. 6 and fake news as being separate from each other. I see it as one causing the other.”

Martinez brought up the Trump presidency’s invention of the term “alternative facts.” The phrase was coined by then-presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway, and it entered into the public vocabulary in 2017 when she used it during an interview on “Meet The Press.”

“I am still baffled by Kellyanne Conway’s use of the term ‘alternative facts,’” Martinez said. “There are no ‘alternative facts.’ There are ‘facts,’ and there are ‘lies.’”

Democracy is not fake news’s only victim. Underserved and underrepresented groups also find themselves targeted by the spread of false, particularly damaging information. This leads to increased violence and even normalized discrimination against these groups.

“A lot of misinformation and disinformation is aimed at ‘the other’.” Martinez said.

Other targeted communities include Black men, Asian Americans and transgender people, who all already struggle historically with discrimination and misconceptions surrounding their identities. This struggle is further ampli- fied when public figures give a platform to false information and disseminate it to their large audiences.

Harrison pointed to the example of stories of men dressing as women to gain access to women’s spaces to commit sex crimes and the effects the tales have on perceptions on the transgender community, especially trans women.

“You have people like J.K. Rowling who’ll talk about this issue like it’s something all women have to deal with when maybe it’s happened once,” Harrison said.

Another threat looming over the horizon is the increasing usage of “deepfake” technology. The technology is developing rapidly and is already being readily adopted for malicious use. For example, a scandal broke out recently when a Twitch streamer was caught paying for and watching deepfake pornography of his popular female colleagues.

JEM professor Joy Jenkins has introduced the topic of deepfakes to her classes. She says it is a growing threat that should be looked into.

“The things we are seeing in the audio and visual environment, especially how they can be manipulated, can be really scary,” Jenkins said. “It’s getting hard to discern what’s real and what’s not, so that’s definitely a coming concern we should be paying attention to moving forward.”

Harrison proposes just the threat of deepfake poses is damaging enough without throwing actual use of the tech into the mix.

“Every bit of new technology that can contribute to fake news ironically makes people more skeptical of what they see in media,” Harrison said. “As a result of that, people spread wild conspiracy theories based on the idea deepfake technology exists.”

Harrison cited the debacle around Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who was hospitalized following a cardiac episode during a football game. Although Hamlin posted a video message reassuring fans of his recovery and appeared at a Bills game at the end of January, conspiracy theories began popping up that the “real” Hamlin had died and all of his subsequent appearances were the work of body doubles – or more wildly, clones – and deepfake technology.

While it may seem fake news is poised to take over the world, there is some hope. Professors are seeing a good measure of media literacy and cWritical thinking in their recent classes, despite a potential decrease in formal media literacy education. The types of media students are consuming are also making them more knowledgeable and sensitive to other viewpoints.

Jenkins says she sees fewer students in her intro classes reporting that they have had any prior media literacy training before college. At the same time, however, she has also seen a greater and broader awareness in her students.

“When I talk to students, they are critical thinkers and are aware there are bad actors and bad information out there,” Jenkins said. “They are skeptical of things and do check and double-check if something doesn’t seem quite right.”

“This generation seems to be more thoughtful about these things.”

Harrison added: “I’m impressed with my classes just how much they know about certain modes of representation, and it’s often because they read something or watched something on TikTok that informed them.”