How often do you turn the TV on to watch the news? Or even better, when was the last time you read the newspaper? In recent years, new options for acquiring news have emerged in the social media universe. News platforms have suddenly become Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Tik Tok. These platforms have the power and resources to spread news like never before. User activity and dependence is so high that in many cases, news about natural disasters spreads so quickly that it reaches the public before news outlets have a chance to address and confirm the matter. People are able to easily record or photograph events going on around them, which can instantly spread to millions of people.
“Adults under 30 are now almost as likely to trust information from social media sites as they are to trust information from national news outlets.”
According to studies, many users say the main reason they use these apps is to stay informed about current events. The issue with this is that oftentimes misinformation, extremist ideas, and political bias are spread. With constant information overload, it can be easy for fake news to take over. As Nobel Prize winning economist and psychologist Herbert A. Simon noted, “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.”
Moreover, I think it's important for us to understand the power of algorithms, and how we are typically only exposed to things we are most likely to agree with or be interested in based on our past searches or interactions on social media. Based on our past preferences, search engines and social media platforms provide personalized recommendations that can sometimes shield us from information that might change our minds or challenge our existing beliefs.
I recently came across a study that mentioned that “false news stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories are. It takes true stories six times as long to reach 1,500 people as it does for false stories to reach the same number of people.” This is a concerning finding because the spread of false information is an ongoing cycle that is extremely harmful to society. While bots may have a role in the spread of misinformation, the study found that human beings are actually responsible for the virality of fake news. Something that stood out to me in this study was that tweets that contained false information were viewed as more novel, and spread because they generated an emotional charge out of its readers. The posts that sound “crazy stupid” are actually the ones that go massively viral. Spreading false information without ensuring the information is credible has harmful consequences not only for people’s personal behavior, but for the overall ability to communicate with others and function as a society. The communication tools used on social media are becoming counterproductive to actual communication due to the spread of lies.
This is especially seen with memes that spread on social media. With the release of important news, there will always be a stream of memes that follow. This new norm causes serious matters to be misrepresented and to lose the required attention they deserve. Memes pose a threat to democracy because if more people continue to view social and political matters as sources of comedy and, more importantly, use memes as a valid news source, the more false and biased information will be created and spread.
Essentially, news no longer assumes credibility. I personally don’t trust everything I read anymore and urge myself and others to educate themselves on a matter before reposting or sharing something on social media to prevent this harmful cycle from getting worse.
I agree that the issue with the mix of social media and news is the accuracy and spread of misinformation. The creation and point of social media is to keep people entertained so when the latest news story gets released the one that is going to circulate the most is going to be the most entertaining one which most of the time isn't the most accurate one. I think that it is good that people have a platform to share news, videos, or photos that bigger news companies may ignore or shield but there needs to be a way to restrict false stories spreading, taking away from the actual important news or issue.