Social media has become a popular source of political information for internet users. At the same time, fake news creators view the platform as conducive because of its low-cost model and ease of access. Many scholars like Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow also argued that people on social networking sites prefer to read and share news stories that are aligned with their “ideological positions.” These behaviors create additional advantages for spreading fake news on social media because people who are used to receiving news from a social network like Facebook are less likely to obtain evidence about the true states that would counter ideologically aligned but false stories (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). Sometimes it may be counterintuitive to self-doubt when we are reading something that is highly aligned with our personal beliefs and values.
Many scholars have found evidence about how social media usage and fake news have played influential roles during the 2016 presidential election. Guess et al.’s studies discussed whether people differentially consume misinformation that reassures their political standpoints, which were built upon on the theories of selective exposure. According to their results, Trump supporters were far more likely to visit fake news websites than Clinton supporters (Guess et al., 2018). Selective exposure also played a role in the 2016 election. The people who supported Trump were more likely to view pro-Trump fake news and “less likely to consume pro-Clinton fake news relative to Clinton supporters” (Guess et al., 2018, p. 5), which was not surprising. Their research results are also aligned with Groshek and Koc-Michalska’s findings. According to Groshek and Koc-Michalska (2017), “among all the individual candidates, the likelihood of support for Trump was the most influenced by different social media usage patterns” (p. 9). Through the results of the 2016 presidential election, fake news has been brought to the public radar.
Some optimists may suggest to frequent to heavy social media users to fact-check when they are getting exposed to non-mainstream news. Based on Lazer et al.’s (2018) studies that were published in Science in March 2018, fact-checking is sometimes counterproductive when there is familiarity bias in politics because people often recall information, “or how they feel about it, while forgetting the context within which they encountered it” (Lazer et al., 2018, p.1095 ). They further argue the risk of repeating false information even under a fact-checking situation may also increase users’ likelihood of viewing the misinformation as true. Emotion certainly influences how we want to believe certain things, especially when they counter our previous beliefs. However, they further suggest different ways to educate media consumers to be proactive using the fact-checking forms PolitiFact and Snopes to evaluate factual claims of news reports.
Behavior change definitely takes some time to practice, especially when we have been getting used to our old behavior. Similarly, fact-checking is not natural for some people and requires some practice. As I reflected on my personal experiences of consuming news on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, I realized self-awareness, critical thinking, and social network play significant roles in my news consumption and interaction behaviors. If I see someone whom I trust share some news on Facebook, I would be more than likely to pay more attention to his or her post and even to take actions, such as sharing or commenting on that piece of content. My decision also affects my network because they are more likely to be exposed to the same piece of content due to my actions. Similarly, I am less likely to fact-check news that my friends shared on Twitter because of trust and ease of sharing. In addition, bots make it even more challenging to ignore some misinformation across different platforms as we are being exposed to the same fake news repetitively with various forms. I believe being on the conservative side of constantly challenging ourselves to validate information would eventually help in shaping our news-consuming behaviors. Though ignoring the fake news that is being shared on social media is sometimes difficult, I need to be more proactive and be more responsible for validating secondhand information.
REFERENCES
Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. American Economic Association, 211–235. doi:10.3386/w23089
Groshek, J., & Koc-Michalska, K. (2017). Helping populism win? Social media use, filter bubbles, and support for populist presidential candidates in the 2016 US election campaign. Information, Communication & Society, 20(9), 1-19.
Guess, A., Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2018). Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 US presidential campaign. European Research Council. 1-14.
Lazer, D. M. J., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F., …Zittrain, J. L. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094–1096. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao2998