“Trump Supporter Stabbed by 21-Year-Old Black Man,” “Pope Francis Endorses Bernie Sanders for President,” everyone knows the headlines. This sort of “fake news” headlines flooding Facebook newsfeeds have come under close scrutiny recently for their influence on this year’s election.
Authoritative, or “real,” news outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNN have begun investigating just how influential this “fake news” was during the election and how they impacted the electoral victory of Donald Trump on Nov. 8.
Never in history did people suspect that Mongolian hackers or Russian propagandists had a substantial impact on an American presidential election. But it is becoming more clear that may be the case. Truth-bending and partisan spin is nothing new in politics. But how could a man who has lied so consistently for over a year on the campaign trail see “thousands of Muslims were cheering in New Jersey on 9/11” and who perpetuated wild conspiracies throughout like Ted Cruz’s dad was involved in the killing of JFK convincing millions of Americans he has the integrity to lead the free world?
The answer is a combination of this new fake news phenomenon and the not-so-new phenomenon of good old fashioned misinformation. The public, as a general rule, distrusts mainstream media. Conservatives in particular are even less likely to trust the news while they dismiss most of it as nothing but an arm of the liberal elites. Skepticism of mainstream news coverage is typically healthy, but too often we have seen those who detest traditional reporting stray further and further into the fringes of partisanship.
So when a headline pops up reading “Donald Trump has the document to destroy Obama” that confirms or advances one of their preconceived notions about a candidate, why not share, right?
The propaganda outlets, foreign and domestic, make money through Facebook and Twitter through advertising when their links are merely clicked on, not even read. People know that Russia and its allies were rooting for a Trump presidency for his anti-NATO comments. People also know through Wikileaks they had a concerted effort to expose damning information contained in Hillary Clinton’s emails. Thus, foreign powers were not only incentivized by the Trump presidency, but the advertising money they could rake in by capitalizing on the lack of regulation by Facebook and other social media websites to filter out nonsense “news” articles.
Trump won the election fairly albeit due to the archaic electoral college system and to suggest otherwise would be peddling the same conspiracies that Trump has been denounced for. But it would be foolish not to recognize Russia’s clear interest in this election and the loads of “fake news” they and others have injected into daily American news consumption. It is now up to Facebook and Twitter to filter out this blatantly false information from appearing on people’s timelines. But more importantly it is up to the people to read and watch the news critically to ensure everyone is well-informed, well-equipped public.
