Fake News & Facebook

For my case study, I focused on the impact of fake news on Facebook and how that relates to what is new about new media. In the age of new media, information is now able to reach billions of people pretty instantaneously. However, my question about this new age rapid information transfer is what kind of effects could there be when billions of people are told false information all at once. Fake news, which is articles that are intentionally and verifiably false, has become increasingly popular on Facebook, particularly during the 2016 presidential election. Because new media is increasingly in the hands of individuals who follow no particular criteria for their selection of information, as opposed to being under the control of owners and publishers like in traditional media, people are easily able to post whatever information they want, whether it is true or not. Furthermore, since the new media age allows information to theoretically reach an infinite number of people within seconds, billions of people can see this false information that individuals are posting practically immediately. This situation begs the question of how many people are believing what they see on the internet/social media? Overall, new media are not the gatekeepers that traditional media is, and because nearly the whole world population uses some form of new media, many negative effects can arise through this rapid news transfer that new media allows for.