James Edwin Sholtz
Entrepreneur, Graduate Student,
Filmmaker
Tel: 734-334-0108
Email: Info@JamesEdwinSholtz.Com
Social Media and The Spread of Misinformation
New Media Focus
Abstract
During the 2016 Presidential election campaign, American citizens witnessed a massive change in the role emerging media technologies have in shaping our democracy. An incredibly contentious campaign from the beginning, both sides ultimately relied on social media more than any other election in American history to reach potential voters. Facebook was a massive tool used by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump in their attempt to sway undecided voters. Facebook was also used by individuals and corporations to create and share content about each candidate, much of which was false information, and much more engaging to its intended audience than content produced by longstanding, reputable news organizations. These false and misleading stories and headlines were viewed and shared millions of times, shaping the way readers viewed both candidates, and potentially, helping to decide the Presidential election. While the First Amendment protects American’s freedom of speech, there are ethical concerns about the creation and sharing of misleading information. These ethical concerns must be addressed by the social media sites that publish the majority of the false content. With over 2 billion active users globally, Facebook is a giant in communications, a website that has the ability to allow individuals and corporations to share their personal views, post content in any form they wish, and share that content with millions of people.
Social media communication mediums, including Twitter and Facebook, have a drastically different structure than traditional media technologies such as television, film, newspapers, and radio, when the reporting of events is involved. Content on social media websites can be created and shared among its users without the implementation of traditional journalistic sources, editorial approval, or third party fact checking. A user on Facebook, for example, without journalism experience or a reputation as a reputable source could potentially write an article that may reach as many readers as an article from The Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, or the New York Times. This has had a drastic impact on how citizens receive the news, and how it is shared with the public. According to data from the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of American adults now receive at least some of their news information on social media websites such as Facebook (Gottfried and Shearer 2016). Traditional news mediums such as television, radio, and print newspapers are losing their foothold, as online news continues to grow, likely surpassing these formats in the next few years. More and more Americans are receiving their news from internet sources. As of August 2017, 43 percent of Americans report often getting the news online, only 7 percent fewer than the 50 percent who report they often obtain their news from television (Gottfried and Shearer 2016). While 25 percent report getting their news from radio, and another 18 percent from print newspapers (primarily or in addition to television and online news sources), the only platform that grew from 2016 was online news, with all other platforms decreasing in popularity. The internet will be the primary source for American news gathering and news sharing very soon. Traditional journalists were once armed with investigative skills, with sources ideally being checked and double checked, with all the facts being scrutinized before a story went to press or on the air. These traditional news platforms were controlled and monitored by ethical guidelines and principles that journalists were careful to abide by. With the explosion of online news, ethical lines are becoming increasingly blurred. Today, anyone with internet or computer savvy can build a professional appearing website or blog, give it a catchy name, start producing stories, and call themselves a journalist. Some of these self titled journalists create false content in order to gain website clicks, which boost their readership, increasing their advertising revenue. Who is to be held accountable for such actions? If our freedom of speech is to be protected, does a company such as Facebook have the right to step in and decide what is appropriate for a user to post on its social media site, or should any speech be tolerated as long as it does not violate our laws?Social media websites such as Facebook allow an individual to tailor his or her preferences to exactly what they want, whether it is the community they choose to tell others they live in, the friends they have, or the content they share and receive. For example, someone in Chicago could create a Facebook page, list New York as their current city, present themselves as a Democrat when in fact they are Republican, and gather Facebook friends. They can become influencers, all while living a social media based lie. “As of the third quarter of 2017, Facebook had 2.07 billion monthly active users” (https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/). While the majority of those on Facebook are likely who they say they are, many people online do have an avatar, an icon, figure, personality, or representation of a particular person on the internet. Communicating with someone as they pretend to be someone else is frightening enough, however, it is the ability to close one’s self off on social media, only receiving information and feedback from those they choose that is alarming. “In a well-functioning democracy, people do not live in echo chambers or information cocoons. They see and hear a wide range of topics and ideas. They do so even if they did not, and would not, choose to see and hear these topics and those ideas in advance. These claims raise serious questions about online behavior and uses of social media, and the astonishing growth in the power to choose — to screen in and screen out (#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, Sunstein, 2017). On social media, the user has the choice to be whatever they want. The user can receive information from anyone they want, share with who they want, and essentially, cocoon themselves in any online community they desire. Technology has evolved dramatically over the years, yet some things stay the same. In the initial news printing era, a newspaper would only circulate as far as their delivery trucks could drive. Television and radio stations could initially broadcast only as far as their signal would allow them. This certainly has economic implications, but going further, it challenges everything we know about media based communications, as an individual in France can influence an entire community in Los Angeles. “Today, these interests are carried forward into a globalizing, digital age, as high-powered computers allow for vast flows of financial information while diminishing the historically-perceived “tyranny of geography” (Gillespie & Robins, 1989, p. 7) and turning transactional time into nanoseconds (The Handbook of Mass Media Ethics, Wilkins & Christians, 2009). However, while regrettable and seemingly closed off, cocooning oneself in their own online community is not the greatest fear, it is when an individual reaches far past his or her community with information that is false, misleading the individuals and communities they are reaching. With mass transportation, greater radio signals, cable television, and the invention of the internet, geography is no longer limited. What once would have been a local story now has the ability to be seen and heard nationally and internationally. An individual in any corner of the world has the ability to have their voice be heard. While there is beauty in this idea, ethical concerns regarding the integrity of journalism and the spreading of information are higher than ever before. America seems to be headed further down the rabbit hole. Automated news is becoming more prominent, with computers and non-professionals doing the investigative reporting work once conducted by professional journalists. As an increasing number of Americans obtain their news from social media sites, internet blogs, and various websites, there may eventually have to be federal or international regulations in place that forcefully deter the spreading of misleading or false information, while still allowing freedom of speech to be had. This is a tremendous challenge for democracy. Freedom of speech is crucial to our nation’s greatness, yet at the same time, there has to be responsibility for all citizens within that freedom. Traditional news platforms are certainly fading, and fading rather quickly. This causes many ethical concerns, as more and more bloggers and casual internet writers are now claiming to be “journalists,” diluting the field of professional journalism. As social media users try to fight through a seemingly endless supply of “fake news” stories, false posts, photoshopped images claiming to be truth, and the countless amount of internet “trolls” who spread rumors, gossip, and lies, all in the name of news, American’s are losing trust in nearly everything they see and hear. Fake news reports on social media is truly an epidemic. So much of America’s population gets their news information from social networking sites like Facebook, but what percentage of what they see and hear is actually false? A Nielsen Company audience report reveals that adults in the United States devoted about 10 hours and 39 minutes each day to consuming media. If the average adult American devotes so much of their life to consuming media, how much false information do they receive? Does this dilute intelligence and the ability to have a fair democracy in America?In Do New Media Make the Practice of Journalism More or Less a Profession?, by Jude Terna Kur, Ph.D and Coleman F. Essien, the authors write that “One major challenge the new media have brought against the notion of journalism as a profession is the lack of control of entry into the practice of journalism. With new media communication technologies, an individual may appear to be a journalist as long as he or she has access to the technology and knows how to use it effectively. You don’t need to be formally trained in the practice of journalism before you are considered one by an audience anymore. People from other professions, with these new media technologies, have become journalists, some of them excellent, many far from it. The idea of obtaining a college degree in journalism from a reputable school used to seem essential to become a journalist, broadcast anchor, reporter, or “newsperson.” Today, it seems if you can generate enough attention to earn likes and shares on social media websites, you have earned the right to call yourself a journalist. One wonders what the twenty year journalism veteran with a professional journalism degree feels about the 19 year old blogger with a high school diploma that has surpassed him in readership, all while being paid handsomely by advertisers on his news blog site.Oxford Dictionaries chose "post-truth" as its 2016 word of the year and defined it as the state of affairs when "objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” This can be led back to social media usage and the spread of misinformation. Misleading and outright false headlines and news stories posted on social media giants such as Facebook during the 2016 Presidential election saw engagement in the millions, in some cases, millions per article. It is these ethical concerns that must be dealt with if we are to have a continuing democracy in the United States. Traditional mass media is disappearing. We have to protect the interests of America before it is too late. During the 2016 United States Presidential election campaign, the mass media discovered the difficult truth that traditional journalism is on the verge of becoming smothered by a social media communications system that ignites and accelerates misinformation, false claims, untruths, and outright deception. Should the internet be regulated, or should the First Amendment continue to grant these websites the right to share any and all information and misinformation they desire? Who is held accountable for spreading false stories that mislead the public, and what can be done to educate the public about the consequences?“How does new technology disrupt how information is spread? Simply put, each communication method has its associated societal norms and customs — i.e, the way things are “supposed to be done.” However, new technology disrupts these norms, because none existed up to that point. Until society agrees to the norms — whether through government regulation or societal self-regulation — various parties will abuse it to serve their agendas. This results in false information reaching the public—deliberately or by accident. Either way, it results in what we know as fake news today. The internet is only the latest communications technology used to spread propaganda. It allows a small number of individuals to influence and manipulate the opinions of a larger audience. In addition, the targeting and crowd dynamics created by social media allows for ideas — true or otherwise-to spread faster than ever before. News management and opinion manipulation by itself is not necessary “evil.” Corporate communications and public relations departments often use certain propaganda techniques as a crisis management measure to prevent panic, additional financial and reputation damage, etc. (The Fake News Machine: How Propagandists Abuse the Internet and Manipulate the Public, Gu, Kropotov, Yarochkin, 2017).
Social media websites such as Facebook have become a giant in the gathering and sharing of current events and news stories. There was once a time when we put our trust in news sources such as television, newspapers, radio, and books. With social media and the remarkably massive growth in the amount of information individuals are now capable of sharing to large audiences at a staggeringly fast rate, the information and education presented has become extremely diluted. So much of what was spread on social media during the 2016 presidential election campaign was false, yet millions and millions of people saw it, read it, and shared it. This is a major disruption on not only our political landscape, but on our democracy as a whole. This is only the beginning. More information is being shared on social media than ever before, and it continues to grow. Misleading Headlines on Facebook
During the 2016 Presidential Campaign
There were countless headlines and news articles shared on Facebook during the 2016 Presidential campaign that were found to be inaccurate. Here are six of those headlines, all of which collectively totaled engagement in the millions.“Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for President.” This headline was initially published by a website called WTOE-5 News prior to being shared by a popular fake news publisher Ending the Fed. However, by November 8, 2016, the story had picked up 960,000 Facebook engagements. “During a press conference on October 2, Pope Francis spoke publicly about the U.S. election for the first time, stating “I never say a word about electoral campaigns" and that there were "difficulties" with both candidates; Reuters reported. Francis also spoke out against the dangers of fake news on December 7 in an interview with the Belgian Catholic Weekly, calling it a “sickness" (https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/30/read-all-about-it-the-biggest-fake-news-stories-of-2016.html).“Donald Trump sent his own plane to transport 200 stranded marines.” This headline picked up 893,000 user engagements. The article stated that in 1991, a group of United States Marines had been stranded after Operation Desert Storm, and that Donald Trump had found out about it and sent his own private plane to collect them. The original story can be traced back to Sean Hannity, an extremely popular conservative political commentator on Fox News. The Washington Post fact-checked Hannity's article and discovered that the actual story is slightly different. A Trump-branded plane did indeed pick up the Marines, but it wasn't Donald Trump's personal jet. It was a Boeing 727 that was part of Trump Shuttle Inc, an airline owned by the president-elect from 1989-1992. “Trump Shuttle Inc never turned a profit, and by 1990 it had defaulted on its loans. The planes were eventually seized but, before the business was sold, Trump Shuttle Inc contracted out its planes to the U.S. Army, one of which picked up the stranded Marines” (https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/30/read-all-about-it-the-biggest-fake-news-stories-of-2016.html).“Ireland is now officially accepting Trump refugees from America.” This story, which was 100 percent inaccurate, generated an engagement of 810,000 individuals on Facebook alone.“WikiLeaks confirms Hillary sold weapons to ISIS … Then drops another bombshell.” This headline generated 789,000 engagements just before election day.“ISIS leader calls for American Muslim voters to support Hillary Clinton.” This is another “news” story shared by thousands of users on Facebook and by hundreds of fake news sites, often shared with the hashtag #ISISwithher. This particular headline gathered over 522,000 Facebook engagements just prior to the election.“Hillary Clinton in 2013: ‘I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office; they’re honest and can’t be bought.” Within the first week this headline was posted on Facebook, the article had captured the attention of 481,000 active users.These six false headlines received a total of over 4.4 million engaged readers, on Facebook alone. Six false headlines reached nearly four and a half million people, on one social media site. The number of false or misleading headlines created and shared on Facebook during the 2016 Presidential campaign was likely in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Countless millions of individuals, who regularly receive their news from Facebook read false information constantly during the campaign. There is little doubt that many Americans were swayed to vote in one direction or the other based on these entirely fabricated headlines and articles, often being shared as real news, when they were intentionally created to mislead and persuade. Who is to blame for this, and how can this be prevented from happening again? The democracy of the United States needs an answer to these questions. With the enormity of social media and the growing percentage of Americans who receive their news from these websites, the political landscape will only continue to become cloudier. The dilemma of our freedom of speech comes into play however, as restricting what individuals say is a tight balancing act. “In the common understanding, the free speech principle is taken to forbid governments from “censoring” speech of which it disapproves. In the standard cases, the government attempt to impose penalties, whether civil or criminal, on political dissent, libelous speech, commercial advertising, or sexually explicit speech. The question is whether the government has a legitimate and sufficiently weighty reason for restricting the speech that it seeks to control” (Sunstein, 2017). This is the concern Facebook is now facing after receiving incredible scrutiny during and after the 2016 election, a concern that Facebook is now attempting to act on, both legally, and ethically.
In November of 2016, days after the United States Presidential election, Facebook announced it would begin cracking down on “fake news.” Facebook updated the language in their Audience Network policy (buried deep on their website) to explicitly state they will not tolerate fake news, including advertisements that show misleading content. “Facebook’s decision to clarify its advertising policy language is notable because Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s chief executive, has repeatedly fobbed off criticism that the company had an effect on how people voted. In a post on his Facebook page over the weekend, he said that 99 percent of what people see on the site is authentic, and only a tiny amount is fake news and hoaxes” (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/technology/google-will-ban-websites-that-host-fake-news-from-using-its-ad-service.html). This claim by Zuckerberg that “ 99 percent of what people see on the site is authentic” cannot be proven however, and may be false news itself. In December of 2016, weeks after the Presidential election and after continuous scrutiny by Americans fed up with the lies that were spread prior to election day, Facebook announced that instead of being buried deep on their website, fake news stories would be more easily flagged by its users. Facebook users can now alert Facebook to potentially false or misleading stories, which Facebook will then have sent to a third-party organization to fact check. The five organizations Facebook is working with to fact check these possible false stories are Politifact, Snopes, AP, ABC News, and FactCheck.org. Once a story has been proven to be false, it will then be flagged and labeled on Facebook as “disputed by third-party fact checkers.” However, it will not be removed. A Facebook user will be able to click on the link to discover why it has been flagged, and if they still choose to share the misleading article, they will receive another warning from Facebook about the article’s validity. As misleading headlines have proven to be problematic on social media, Facebook has also initiated another change in order to identify stories that have been shared a certain (unknown) number of times by users who have not clicked on or read the article, yet have still shared the post, only after reading the false headline. “We’ve found that if reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it, that may be a sign that a story has misled people in some way,” a Facebook spokesperson stated in December of 2016. Mark Zuckerberg stated that same month “While we don’t write the news stories you read and share, we also recognize we’re more than just a distributor of news. We’re a new kind of platform for public discourse — and that means we have a new kind of responsibility to enable people to have the most meaningful conversations, and to build a space where people can be informed.” Clearly Zuckerberg is finally admitting the rampant problem facing democracy in the United States. Fake news is an epidemic that must be contained. “According to data from a Facebook monitoring tool cited by BuzzFeed, the top 20 fake news stories collectively got more engagements — shares, likes, and comments — than 20 factually accurate news stories shared by mainstream news outlets,” (http://www.businessinsider.com/fake-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook-before-us-election-report-2016-11). Yes, the top 20 fake news stories generated more engagement than 20 accurate news stories shared by reputable news sources. In 2017 Facebook took action against fake news by adding an additional defense. In August 2017, Facebook announced that if a Facebook page or website linking to and sharing on Facebook is found to spread fake news repeatedly, then Facebook will ultimately block that page or website from advertising on Facebook. If that page stops producing false stories however, it may then be eligible to start advertising once again, which raises question about the extreme capitalistic greed involved. Still, even if that particular page were to be banned from advertising forever, it still does not prevent them from sharing false stories, only from advertising them on Facebook with paid ads. In addition, one can create a new page in minutes, which makes it very difficult for Facebook to keep up with repeat offenders. “To the extent that fake news imposes social costs, what can and should be done? In theory, a social planner should want to address the market failures that lead to distortions, which would take the form of increasing information about the state of the world and increasing incentives for news consumers to infer the true state of the world. In practice, social media platforms and advertising networks have faced some pressure from consumers and civil society to reduce the prevalence of fake news on their systems. For example, both Facebook and Google are removing fake news sites from advertising platforms on the grounds that they violate policies against misleading content. Furthermore, Facebook has taken steps to identify fake news articles, flag false articles as “disputed by 3rd party fact-checkers,” show fewer potentially false articles in users’ news feeds, and help users avoid accidentally sharing false articles by notifying them that a story is “disputed by 3rd parties” before they share it. In our theoretical framework, these actions may increase social welfare, but identifying fake news sites and articles also raises important questions about who becomes the arbiter of truth” (Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election. Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017). Conclusion
Facebook recognizes that if they wish to continue to be the incredibly massive communications tool over 2 billions individuals use worldwide, then they cannot outright censor their user content. They have to make an ethical decision that still allows for freedom of speech, yet protects people from being misled. In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election, there is evidence that supports the idea that false or misleading news, especially on social media, may have helped in the election of Donald Trump. Political affiliation aside, this assault on democracy cannot be ignored. Regardless of which candidate wins elections moving forward, we must find an ethical solution to prevent the rampant wildfire like spread of false news stories. The ethical problem is evident. Just days after the 2016 Presidential election, Facebook finally realized it must do as much as it can to limit access to these false and misleading stories, while still maintaining the opportunity for its users to have freedom of speech and share the content they wish to share. It is a dilemma that is surely going to gain more attention in the coming years, especially leading up to and during the 2020 Presidential election, an election that will see more content being shared online than ever before.References
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