The Motives Lying Behind the Fake News and The Importance of Fake News Awareness

It is insane to think about how often we are surrounded by misinformation. It is everywhere, in the media, on the news, and spread by everyday conversations. “You can’t be distracted by the noise of misinformation” (Daly). And fake news is no exception to this. Fake news is when an author creates a source providing fake information to the public, usually in an attempt to sway the reader's opinion to match their own.

Usually, these examples of fake news can be found on blogs that used to be small, but became larger to the popularity on their false article. It will surprise you to know that fake news can even be found on popular news sources due to misinformation on the topic they are reporting about. Sometimes this form of false information is made as a form of satire articles made just for the sake of money. If you are not educated on why these articles are produced, you will be more likely to fall for their misinformation. Fake news is clearly a growing problem and in order to avoid it, it is best to understand the history behind fake news and the reasoning that creators have behind their decisions to create false articles. In addition to that, it is beneficial to know how social media platforms help to increase the spread of this negative impact on to their users.

A majority of people believe that fake news is a recent concept that began because of the past election, when in reality it has been occurring for a while in a variety of places other than America. For example, in Italy 1475, it was reported that a 2 ½-year-old child had gone missing, and soon people began to speculate that the kidnapping was due to the Jewish community. “A 2 ½-year-old child named Simonino had gone missing, and a Franciscan preacher, Bernardino da Feltre, gave a series of sermons claiming that the Jewish community had murdered the child, drained his blood and drunk it to celebrate Passover” (Soll). There was no evidence that anybody in the Jewish community committed the crime as a sacrifice to their religion, but as a result of this fake news spreading, 15 Jews were executed. This was not the only instance of fake news occurring centuries ago. Citizens were already aware that not all news they were receiving was telling them the truth. So many decided to listen to only rely on government documents, otherwise known as “relazioni”. But even if they decided to only trust this type of source, they still weren’t completely safe from fake news. “But it wasn’t long before leaked original documents were soon followed by fake relazioni leaks” (Soll). This goes to show that no matter how safe you think the news you are receiving is, it is always beneficial to double check.

Even though many people think that times a century ago were very different than today, some of the reasons why people make fake news remained the same; making it make yourself appear better. Here is clear example of that“Early hoaxes validated: a young poet tracing a false genealogy between himself and the greats; Joice Heth providing a direct line between her 19th-century spectators and the father of the country. By the late 20th century, the hoax had turned grim” (Schneier). This is still a recurring problem, with people trying to claim genes that do not belong to them. Clearly, fake news has been an ongoing issue for several centuries and has left generations of people stuck with false information. As we can see, fake news is definitely not a new concept, and since it has been around for so long, you might wonder what about spreading misinformation is so appealing to certain creators.

Every fake news author seems to have a different motive. Some make these articles for the purpose of satire, while others create these false articles with the intention of hoping that people believe them. There are some who make it just for the sake of gaining money from ads. “. . . while some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, ” (Maheshwari). A majority of these types of entrepreneurs don’t even have the intention to change people’s minds with their posts. For example, some only post what they post because they know that it will attract attention. “The stuff that was anti-Trump was just not getting the same traction. And so I think what happened is that a lot of people creating fake news looked at this and said, well, let's go all-in on Trump” (Davies).

This just adds to the evidence that if you will be more likely to believe something that confirms your beliefs before seeing the article. Many people don’t even care to check if what they are reading is fake news or from a satire site, because they think that what they are seeing is enough to back their claim. Although many creators don’t have an opinion on what they post about, there are some that do. “Mr. Tucker, who had taken photos of a large group of buses he saw near downtown Austin earlier in the day because he thought it was unusual, saw reports of protests against Mr. Trump in the city and decided the two were connected” (Maheshwari).

He later went to post this saying “Anti Trump protesters are not as organic as they seem. ” When in reality, all of the busses that he saw were there because of a large corporate meeting holding about 13, 000 people. The busses had no correlation with the anti-Trump protesters, but because he already had a negative look on these protesters and had heard about an anti-Trump protest going on near the busses, he automatically assumed that the protesters had arrived in those busses. Regardless, many people who saw this post and believed it. It is obvious that the majority of the creators behind fake news know that they are spreading misleading information and even have certain tactics to make what they are doing more effective. The goal of many fake news creators is forced their information to be believed and for it to be spread. Social media spreads fake news either by users or by ads.

And this greatly impacts a majority of the site’s viewers. Some of these websites, such as Facebook, have been under attack, with some people saying that Facebook wrongfully swayed some voters opinions by promoting certain fake news articles. “Facebook has long spoken of how it helped influence and stoke democratic movements in places like the Middle East, and it tells its advertisers that it can help sway its users with ads” (Wingfield). Since these accusations, Facebook and a couple other companies have declared that they will try to do a better job at stopping these fake news articles from being advertised on their site. Google even claimed, “. . . it would ban websites that peddle fake news from using its online advertising service” (Wingfield).

Due to so much fake news wrongfully influencing people, even large companies have come to realize, and are doing the best they can to eliminate as much fake news as they can. But sometimes, the site itself isn’t the one in trouble for starting these fake news articles. Instead, it can be the users. “Travis McKinney’s Facebook feed was hit with a scattershot of conspiracy theories. The police were lying. There were multiple shooters in the hotel, not just one. The sheriff was covering for casino owners to preserve their business” (Carey).

When a traumatic event happens, it is natural that people come up with their own theories to try and cope with the events or to try and bring justice to the victims of the incident. But when users start dismissing these theories as facts without any clear evidence is when this issue starts to become fake news. Not only is fake news changing people’s opinions on political situations, but it is even starting to affect the way that everyday people see regular news. “There is an alarming number of people who tend to be credulous and form beliefs based on the latest thing they’ve read, but that’s not the wider problem. The wider problem is fake news has the effect of getting people not to believe real things” (Tavernise).

Fake news is quickly making it harder to decipher the real news from fake. And with the spread of this false information, many people see an article that they don’t agree with and decide that it must be fake news without doing further research. Overall, you can tell that many users are becoming more aware of the news that they see and verifying that it is correct, although many people still fall for these misleading articles.

Despite fake news becoming an overwhelming issue that continues to cause debates on whether or not it should be protected under the first amendment as long as your educated on topics surrounding fake news, you are already able to decipher what is real and what isn’t much easier. It also seems that fake news doesn’t seem to be declining anytime soon so you have to make sure that you are protecting yourself from falling subject to these fake news plots.

You can do this by understanding the history of events relating to fake news occurring, why creators create fake news and how website platforms, that we often might visit, will continue to impact the spread. Even though the history of fake news can be confusing and hard to understand, it is good to take a look to better realize that fake news is not a new phenomenon. Like the history of fake news, why fake news occurs can be just as confusing, but knowing the reasoning behind it helps you to know what to avoid.

Same thing with knowing what to avoid in social media. If you find out common patterns between social media accounts that post fake news, then you will find yourself avoiding this misguidance a lot more than you would’ve before. Seeing how often fake news occurs can be depressing, but it definitely makes you realize just how important truth in the media really is.