FAKE NEWS
FAKE NEWS AND SOCIAL MEDIA
INTRODUCTION
Popular social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, have played a major role in the recent development of fake news.
Oftentimes, those with a specific political agenda will use these platforms to spread disinformation pertaining to their agenda. Within these platforms, it is estimated that one-third of the disinformation produced is for this exact purpose.
Social media has become effective in spreading disinformation because of several reasons. On social media, creators of disinformation can specifically target audiences that are easily susceptible to the information and who will most likely share and further spread throughout the platform.
One popular tactic is to target audiences based on their political views. Because the disinformation is likely to align with their political views, there is a higher chance that they will share this information with others.
BOTS
Bots are created by computer programmers to simulate the behavior of human beings. They can communicate and interact with other users and share information.
Bots have artificial intelligence which allows them to learn from their interactions with other users in order to improve their believability.
On Twitter, bots can mimic actions that make them appear like real people. They can respond to Tweets and facilitate debate by posting questions about a trending topic. Bots also look for popular and influential Twitter users and communicate with them in order to build their own popularity and credibility.
Bots help spread fake news because they can post false information repeatedly and continuously. They also use hashtags and trending topics which helps them reach a larger and wider audience.
Because real people often are susceptible to the information spread by bots, they will often Retweet and reply to the postings made by these bots which helps spread false information even further.