Fake news is the bedfellow of what could be called the dialogue of disrespect, and this combination constitutes a fertile breeding ground for political myths.
by Zulkifli Nazim
Media, whether they be electronic, print or audio visual, they are authoritarian hierarchies designed to dominate your free will. They are power structures that aim to convince you to give away your power for the benefit of those who enjoy dominating people. When you start believing everything what every media spews out, you enroll in a mindless minion training program. You’re told what to believe.
Journalism is in a state of considerable flux. New digital platforms have unleashed innovative journalistic practices that enable novel forms of communication and greater global reach than at any point in human history. But on the other hand, disinformation and hoaxes that are popularly referred to as “fake news” are accelerating and affecting the way individuals interpret daily developments. Driven by foreign actors, citizen journalism, and the proliferation of talk radio and cable news, many information systems have become more polarized and contentious, and there has been a precipitous decline in public trust in traditional journalism.
Fake news comes thick and fast, on national issues and in national politics. The public reaction to it varies from great concern and offence to a sense of being entertained. One of the main problems with fake news is that fabricated stories look real – that is their key distinguishing feature. They are believed, shared and circulated by people, thus making fake news what it is, “legit” for consumers-cum-multipliers of news. The role of technology in our societies has changed the nature, scale, speed and direction of disinformation.
Fake news is the bedfellow of what could be called the dialogue of disrespect, and this combination constitutes a fertile breeding ground for political myths.
They are very effective at turning human beings into sheep. They are among the most powerful instruments of social conditioning. They operate by eroding your trust in your own intellect, gradually convincing you to put your trust into some external entity, such as prominent figure. They will condition you to be weaker, more docile, and easier to control. This doesn’t accelerate your intelligence growth; on the contrary it puts the brakes on your continued conscious development.
Recognize the indoctrination and learn to think for yourself. Your intellect is a better instrument of understanding. Once you finally realize your head has been filled with utter nonsense, you must then purge such garbage from your mind if you want your brain to be functional again. That can take considerably longer, assuming you succeed at all.
If you are not alert, and your thinking is mired in shame and guilt, then your mindset, still remains incredibly dysfunctional. Reasonably intelligent people who aren’t suffering from major issues and low self-esteem, will merely burden their mind with a hefty load of false notions.
The difference between false news and fake news lies in its stylization. Printed fake news looks real and new technologies make it much harder to determine that pictures have been purposely doctored to mislead audiences for political purposes.
Propaganda has been around for centuries, and the internet is only the latest means of communication to be abused to spread lies and misinformation. We see that in a digital world “everybody is a journalist”.
Fake news websites are also referred to as hoax news websites. They are Internet websites that deliberately publish fake news—hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation purporting to be real news—often using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect, referred to as the new media, in today’s parlance.
The rise of new media has complicated the political media system. Legacy media consisting of established mass media institutions that predate the Internet, such as newspapers, radio shows, and television news programs, coexist with new media that are the outgrowth of technological innovation. While legacy media maintain relatively stable formats, the litany of new media, which includes websites, blogs, video-sharing platforms, digital apps, and social media, are continually expanding in innovative ways.
The watchdog role pre-new media had been performed largely by trained journalists who, under the best of circumstances, focused on uncovering the facts surrounding serious political transgressions.
Much news in the new media era is defined by coverage of a never-ending barrage of sensational scandals—be they real, exaggerated, or entirely fabricated—that often are only tangentially related to governing.
At the same time, the new media era has acerbated trends that undercut the ideal aims of a democratic press. The media disseminate a tremendous amount of political content, but much of the material is trivial, unreliable, and polarizing.
The diversity of content disseminated by new media has also created opportunities such as the ability for more voices to be heard. They provide unprecedented access to information, and can reach even disinterested audience members through personalized, peer-to-peer channels, like Facebook and twitter and other chat platforms.
The three elements a fire needs to burn: oxygen, heat, and a fuel. Similarly, fake news requires three different elements to succeed - Mistrust, Misinformation and Manipulation. without any one of these factors, it is unable to spread and reach its target audience.
The fight against disinformation and misinformation has become multifaceted. Fake news exposure, which can be seen as the fast-food variant of investigative journalism, is not enough and may have undesirable side effects.
Instead of giving the makers of fake news the attention they crave, we need to look above all, at the consumers of news. There are no quick fixes for what is fundamentally a problem of human behaviour. Fake news can only be understood by looking into the ways in which it is circulated and believed online. In the digital age everything starts with the ordinary individual – neither empowered hero nor hate speech villain – and that applies equally to finding solutions for the problem of fake news.
“Weaponized” communication is affecting everything and everyone.
If a viewer consumes conspiratorial or other misleading content viewing and listening to news, which can reinforce the viewers’ belief that the conspiracy is, in fact, real. Fake news and false allegations are wildfires that can wreak havoc in a country.
Research shows that these techniques for spreading fake news are very effective. On average, a false story reaches 1,500 people six times more quickly than a factual story. This is true of false stories about any topic, but stories about politics are the most likely to go viral.
For all that has changed about disinformation, and the ability to disseminate it, the most important element that has remained the same: the readers, listeners and the viewers. No number of social media bots would be effective in spreading disinformation if the messages did not exploit fundamental human biases and behavior.
People are not rational consumers of information. They seek swift, reassuring answers and messages that give them a sense of identity and belonging. The truth can be compromised when people believe and share information that adheres to their worldview.
The audience are more active in sharing unverified rumors than they are in later sharing that these rumors were either debunked or verified. The veracity of information therefore appears to matter very little.
The ability of individuals to adjust their perceptions after being shown corrected information may vary based on their cognitive ability. It is also an established fact that when true or correct information is presented the individuals with low cognitive ability less frequently adjusted their viewpoints than those with high cognitive ability.
Therefore, in the variegated patchwork that is required to counter fake news, it is important to expose destabilizing narratives based on deliberately hurtful disinformation. The public need to be aware that ‘the law’ is not enough to fix a social illness, and in our collective memory it is hard to dissociate propaganda and lack of freedom of speech from state power. Civil society involvement in fighting fake news deserves more emphasis, and greater resilience of persons – as the smallest units of our society – starts with the systematic introduction of meta-literacy in education. This is some knowledge that promotes critical thinking and collaboration in a digital age, providing a comprehensive framework to effectively participate in social media and online communities. This probably may be the best antidote to fake news.
People who write news for potentially large audiences would benefit from the toolkit of the professional journalist.
Political leaders must be held more accountable because their actions are constantly probed on social media. Members of the public must also be held responsible for recording and posting videos that could go viral and influence the course of events.
Governments should promote news literacy and strong professional journalism in their societies. The news industry must provide high-quality journalism in order to build public trust and correct fake news and disinformation without legitimizing them. Technology companies should invest in tools that identify fake news, reduce financial incentives for those who profit from disinformation, and improve online accountability. Educational institutions should make informing people about news literacy a high priority. Finally, individuals should follow a diversity of news sources, and be skeptical of what they read and watch.
It is imperative, therefore, that we introduce proper and effective legislation to help ban fake news. Laws should initiate against offensive and illegal posts and hate speech by tech giants Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.
Spreading undesirable news digitally in the domestic environment must be outlawed and offenders must be taken to task and legal proceedings instituted without fear or favour.
And finally, Words of Wisdom from Seneca the Roman Philosopher
“Men do not let anyone seize their estates, and if there is the slightest dispute about their boundaries they rush to stones and arms; but allow others to encroach on their lives — why, they themselves even invite in those who will take over their lives.”
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