According to Pablo Boczkowski, fake news is a “digital artifact designed to appear as news.” Although fake news has been around for many years, it has become more prevalent due to the digital revolution and easing access to digital media. The fakest news originates from not journalists in their profession but rather amateur writers who try to go viral. There are three main effects that fake news has on our society: It creates mistrust in media due to unfortunate realism within some stories; It gives journalism a bad reputation because fake stories are untruthful and have no evidence or research backing them; and it prompts an inadequate response from political leaders, which leads to further lack of trust in media as they ignore the issues (Wagner, & Boczkowski, 2019). Boczkowski concludes by stating an optimistic outlook regarding journalism, especially with the same journalistic values that were used at the beginning of the 20th century when print journalism was popular. He states that “lasting change can only come if journalists embrace their values, remain open-minded about how best to practice their craft, and pursue innovation by taking both new technologies and audiences’ needs” seriously.
Boczkowski believes fake news destroys journalism’s ability to serve audiences by reporting accurate and credible information. It undermines public trust in journalism by distinguishing traditional media from more explicit fictional forms like novels or movies. Finally, it renders irrelevant the idea that journalists possess specialized knowledge to gather reliable information (Boczkowski et al., 2017). As a result, the public accepts what they prefer to believe rather than what is most likely true. Rather than reverse this trend, Boczkowski predicts that media organizations will opt for sensationalism and entertainment over fact-based reporting. He believes that journalists need to strengthen their ties with readers to work together as a more open and collaborative process.
I think fake news in American society has a huge impact on our country. News and the media are important to know what is going on in our country and worldwide, but there is a problem when fake news takes place (Van Duyn, & Collier, 2019). We have to trust that what we see is true and has been fact-checked. Now, there are times when the news may be sharing a new story, and they might not have gotten all of their information yet. But they need to update the viewers about further details as soon as they call it. There are also times when local news channels will share an online article because they don’t have all of their information before air time, but it is up to each person to double-check those articles. Because of social media and the fast pace of putting out data and connecting with others, people tend to put fake information out there instead of trustworthy information. If we do not educate our people on being aware of this, we will always have this problem.
Effective tools for getting accurate information are the first step toward dealing with fake news, but a lot of work still needs to be done in other areas. Mainstream media and journalists need to acknowledge their bias and take steps toward being fair and ethical. Political parties need to call out the fake news being created on their side of an issue.
References
Boczkowski, P., Mitchelstein, E., & Matassi, M. (2017, January). Incidental news: How young people consume news on social media. In Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii international conference on system sciences.
Wagner, M. C., & Boczkowski, P. J. (2019). The reception of fake news: The interpretations and practices that shape the consumption of perceived misinformation. Digital journalism, 7(7), 870-885.
Van Duyn, E., & Collier, J. (2019). Priming and fake news: The effects of elite discourse on evaluations of news media. Mass Communication and Society, 22(1), 29-48.
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