‘Fake news’ is a relatively new term as a result of the increasing number of users involved in the media. ‘Fake news’ was crowned ‘word of the year in 2017’ and is one of Trump’s go to phrases throughout his precedency (Telegraph, 2019). Fake articles often circulate and are published on social media for one of two reasons, as a deliberate mistake to make money from a post or an inaccurate article due to poor journalism. Facebook is one of the biggest social media sites in the world but it has recently experienced some turmoil as the site fails to protect its users from fake sources. Due to the increasing difficulty of being able to identify fake news articles, vulnerable people are easily targeted and therefore spread the news further through sharing and liking posts. It is all seems relatively harmless, but is it?
One of the biggest institutions affected by fake news is democracy as regulators need to ‘take urgent action to combat a growing crisis of data manipulation, disinformation and so-called fake news’ (Guardian, 2018). Voters, especially young people, are vulnerable to fake content online which may change the way they vote even though the information is not always true. If people are voting based on misinformation, this can have a serious effect on democracy as many parties have not used the information which has been claimed against them.
Ruining democracy is one damaging issue but loosing lives because of fake news is a whole new field of disruption. In 2018, graphic images were circulated around Facebook which the publisher claimed were from Nigeria. According to the BBC, the users said that the pictures were from ‘Fulani Muslims killing Christians from the region’s Berom ethnic minority’ (BBC News, 2018). These photos were originally from Congo-Brazzaville, but they spread all across Nigeria like wild fire creating a war which was formed from inaccurate information. Eleven men lost their lives because of fake news.
One of the most important questions is how do we distinguish between fake and real news? Apart from the obvious of checking the author and if the news is on any other legit news platforms, are there any linguistic clues into figuring this out? The University of Birmingham state, ‘an author who is trying to inform the public has a very different motivation than an author who is trying to deceive’ (Grieve, 2018), therefore it is important to be wary of the type of language features used in the content of news articles. It has been proven that fake news effects society in huge ways from threatening democracy to loss of lives. There is a need for stricter laws on social media in order to detect and stop the unnecessary spreading of fake news.
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Reference List:
Adegoke, Yemisi (2018) ‘Like. Share. Kill’ BBC News [online] Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/nigeria_fake_news [Accessed on 21st February 2019].
Carson, James (2019) ‘Fake news: what exactly is it – and how can you spot it?’ Telegraph [online] Available from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/fake-news-exactly-has-really-had-influence/ [Accessed on 21st February 2019].
Grieve, Jack (2018) ‘The Language of Fake News’ The University of Birmingham [online] Available from: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/thebirminghambrief/items/2018/09/the-language-of-fake-news.aspx [Accessed on 21st February 2019].
Waterson, Jim (2018) ‘Democracy at Risk due to Fake News and Data Misuse, MPs Conclude’ The Guardian [online] Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/27/fake-news-inquiry-data-misuse-deomcracy-at-risk-mps-conclude [Accessed on 20th February 2019].
Language and the Media Blog 