Forum

 
  Back to OzPolitic.com   Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register
  Forum Home Album HelpSearch Recent Rules LoginRegister  
 

Page Index Toggle Pages: 1
Send Topic Print
News controversy makes one wonder what to believe (Read 261 times)
Unforgiven
Gold Member
*****
Offline


I have sinned

Posts: 8879
Gender: male
News controversy makes one wonder what to believe
Dec 18th, 2016 at 5:24pm
 
Can you only believe what you see? Even video can be edited to falsify the truth and certainly any recorded media can be edited to falsify the recorded event.

Is it possible now to only believe what you are seeing unedited in real time? Any 'news' recorded and shown after the event is capable of being edited to suit the motives and-or politics of the 'news' provider.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/22/most-students-cant-tell-fake-news-from-real-ne...

Quote:
If you thought you heard the last on fake news, you were sadly mistaken.

A Stanford study found that the majority of middle school students can’t tell the difference between real news and fake news. In fact, 82 percent couldn’t distinguish between a real news story on a website and a “sponsored content” post.

Of the 8,704 students studied (ranging in age from middle school to college level), four in ten high-school students believed that the region near Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant was toxic after seeing an unsourced photo of deformed daisies coupled with a headline about the Japanese area. The photo, keep in mind, had no source or location attribution. Meanwhile, two out of every three middle-schoolers were fooled by an article on financial preparedness penned by a bank executive.

It seems that those surveyed in the study were judging validity of news on Twitter based on the amount of detail in the tweet and whether or not a large photo was attached, rather than focusing on the source of the tweet.

The WSJ, which first reported on the study, says that a big part of solving this problem among young people comes down to education, both at school and at home.

But with 62 percent of U.S. adults getting the majority of their news from social media, the responsibility for this issue also lies with the social media organizations themselves, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Both Google and Facebook have made steps toward thwarting the fake news onslaught, including banning fake news organizations from their ad network. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg also posted a number of responses to the issue on Facebook, and gave actual steps toward stopping the spread of fake news on the platform.

That said, the fallout from fake news is not as minor as Zuck originally stated in his first response on Facebook, where he mentioned that less than 1 percent of news on Facebook is fake.

Even in minuscule amounts, fake news has a much greater ability to spread quickly and be consumed by many given the nature of the salacious headlines themselves. Paired with the fact that most adults get their news from social media, and most young people can’t tell the difference, you can see just how problematic this issue is.

Hopefully, steps toward stopping fake news come swiftly and effectively. But until then, it’s important for parents to be diligent in teaching their kids how to determine the difference between a sourced news report and a salacious headline with no evidence behind it.
Back to top
« Last Edit: Dec 18th, 2016 at 6:47pm by Unforgiven »  

“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours” Bob Dylan
 
IP Logged
 
longweekend58
Gold Member
*****
Offline


Australian Politics

Posts: 45675
Gender: male
Re: News controversy makes one wonder what to believe
Reply #1 - Dec 18th, 2016 at 6:22pm
 
Being a cynic has its advantages. You dont believe everything you read or hear before thinking about it.  This is how Trump got elected - on the basis oc fake news and stupid ignorant voters.
Back to top
 

AUSSIE: "Speaking for myself, I could not care less about 298 human beings having their life snuffed out in a nano-second, or what impact that loss has on Members of their family, their parents..."
 
IP Logged
 
Page Index Toggle Pages: 1
Send Topic Print