Is fake news killing people’s minds?
With an abundance of information available in today’s society, everyone has the tools to be an online journalist.
Professor Anabel Quan-Haase, Media & Sociology Professor at Western University explains, “Users really don’t have the capacity to distinguish, what is real news, what is actually a hokes, and what is along the lines of what we now refer to as fake news.”
Facebook has introduced a fake news filter in some parts of the world to stop the spread of inaccurate information on the popular social media site.
Quan-Haase says this could be problematic, “A lot of what people have described as fake news, can also be described as satire.”
Long-time Reporter, Dan Brown, says it’s easy to spot the fake news stories, “You have to have an inner BS detector, you have to have a spidey sense, and you get that by reading a lot of stories. You have to pay very close attention to the wording also.”
Brown says there were plenty of obviously fake news stories circulating during the recent American Presidential election, “I look at the fake news, and I say, that’s so obviously fake news. I don’t know who’s falling for this stuff. They must be very very gullible people and they must not be thinking critically.”
Quan-Haase says to check if a news story is accurate, complete a quick Google search and see what other sources are saying about the story.
If more than a few sources relay the same information, it should be real news.
