4 ms·

Fact-Checking Won’t Save Us from Fake News

2 points by SonicSoul 10y ago

drKarl 10y ago
Traditional mass media (tv, radio, newspapers) have always exerted their power to influence and even create public opinion to further an agenda. The agenda depends on the particular media but the news are never completely objective, always either subtly or blatantly biased in favour of some particular opinion, political wing or thought stream. So, the same piece of news can be interpreted with a completely opposite meaning depending on where you consume it. Now, with the proliferation of alternative media, not only media corporations have the ability to create and manipulate public opinion with their skewed view of reality, there are many other sources of information. Even individuals, regular people, can start a blog or write news or articles and distribute them for free or at a very low cost. That also means that organized groups and societies, political, economical, enterpreneurial, religious or otherwise can also create their own sources of news to advance their own agendas. Even traditional media corporations, which have immense resources compared to an individual, can easily create multiple blogs or sources of news, masquerading or not as an individual. That means that traditionally all news were biased and skewed towards some agenda, but we knew more or less the bias of the media corporations, so we could identify that bias in the news we consumed. But now in certain situations it's almost impossible to identify the actors behind an individual or seemingly individual who writes an article, or form any other source of news, which means it is even more difficult to identify the bias of the news. And that is only in relation to manipulation adding a bias to real news... But of course there can also be other fake news. The thing with fake news is that some people share or forward them without verifying them so they can spread virally before they are debunked, and the perception of the image of someone or some organization can be permanently damaged even after the fake news have been debunked... But in the end they will be debunked. Which leds me to think that fake news can be both a political (economical, etc) weapon to attack someone's enemies using black tactics... but at the same time they can also be created to inspire "fear" that if you consume news from alternative channels other than the traditional mass media you can consume fake news, in an effort to try to redirect people back to traditional mass media as a "reliable" source of news (which we already know it's manipulative, biased and follows an agenda).

2 points by SonicSoul 10y ago

Traditional mass media (tv, radio, newspapers) have always exerted their power to influence and even create public opinion to further an agenda. The agenda depends on the particular media but the news are never completely objective, always either subtly or blatantly biased in favour of some particular opinion, political wing or thought stream. So, the same piece of news can be interpreted with a completely opposite meaning depending on where you consume it. Now, with the proliferation of alternative media, not only media corporations have the ability to create and manipulate public opinion with their skewed view of reality, there are many other sources of information. Even individuals, regular people, can start a blog or write news or articles and distribute them for free or at a very low cost. That also means that organized groups and societies, political, economical, enterpreneurial, religious or otherwise can also create their own sources of news to advance their own agendas. Even traditional media corporations, which have immense resources compared to an individual, can easily create multiple blogs or sources of news, masquerading or not as an individual. That means that traditionally all news were biased and skewed towards some agenda, but we knew more or less the bias of the media corporations, so we could identify that bias in the news we consumed. But now in certain situations it's almost impossible to identify the actors behind an individual or seemingly individual who writes an article, or form any other source of news, which means it is even more difficult to identify the bias of the news. And that is only in relation to manipulation adding a bias to real news... But of course there can also be other fake news. The thing with fake news is that some people share or forward them without verifying them so they can spread virally before they are debunked, and the perception of the image of someone or some organization can be permanently damaged even after the fake news have been debunked... But in the end they will be debunked. Which leds me to think that fake news can be both a political (economical, etc) weapon to attack someone's enemies using black tactics... but at the same time they can also be created to inspire "fear" that if you consume news from alternative channels other than the traditional mass media you can consume fake news, in an effort to try to redirect people back to traditional mass media as a "reliable" source of news (which we already know it's manipulative, biased and follows an agenda).