How Americans Can Help Stop Fake News and Misinformation

Yellow journalism, or fake news, has been used in our society and past societies for many years. Fake news can be depicted as a method of spreading false information on the media as a way to influence the political views in our society. Many medians —such as television, social media, news articles, radio, etc. promote fake news through propogandas, or other methods, to re-evaluate the truth and confuse the people of society into believing something that isn’t true. The question is, however, why?

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According to Research Guides, there are quite a few reasons why fake news is promoted in our society. Making or receiving money is a vital necessity in human nature. Many people love the idea of money and would do anything to achieve it. However, how exactly does money play a factor in advocating fake news? The reason for this is that many publishers earn money for publishing fake news. Each time that those people publish fake news onto social media, news article, etc., they earn money. Another reason would be because of satirists who enjoy the idea of entertaining or accentuating a point to society. Although these are just a few reasons portraying the logic behind why fake news in published in our society, there are many more. In the 2016 presidential election, it would be no surprise that fake news was used to confuse or influence society. According to an analysis completed by BuzzFeed News, fake stories concerning the election had received more recognition and acknowledgement than the real stories or arguments. This shows that false stories about the presidential election could have influenced the overall perspective of many people within our society. Fake news could also pose as a threat to the government. As one knows, fake news is used to change the opinions of others or simply as a joke. There are many people in our society who are gullible enough to believe in fake news, and not just them, but even the most intelligent as well. Fake news is targeted to confuse people, and many times, it can be quite difficult for some readers to identify whether they are reading fake news or not. For this reason, our government is threatened. Publishers of fake news have the intention of changing the perspectives of our society about the government, thus leaving them confused on whether or not they should believe those stories or not.

Although it is widely believed across America that fake news is the same throughout, according to Pratt Library, there are actually several types of fake news. The most common ones however, are deliberate misinformation and false headlines. Deliberate misinformation is a type of fake news that is shared on social media or other medians, targeted towards people who will easily believe in it. Whereas false headlines is when the headline of an article may be true, however, it has no correspondence with the actual article. This type of fake news is used as “bait” and lures readers into reading the false information.

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Fake news in America is much more common than many may think. Although the use of fake news in many television programs or news articles isn’t new, people do need to begin taking precautions in believing the stories they see. The intentions of those who publish fake news is to influence those in our society and although many are published as a joke, people shouldn’t fall for the trap of those who want to change the overall perspective of our government or society.