With the present day proliferation of social media services and websites, it is easy to see fake news as a new human problem (Bessi et al., 2016). Although fake news dominated headlines in the year 2016, especially during the election cycle, it is not a new phenomenon. By some accounts, fake news goes to as far back as the first ten centuries of human existence, even before the printing press.
Falsehoods, innuendos and half-truths diffuse faster and more extensively than truths. Similarly, effects of false news about politics are more felt than the effects for news about the finance world, natural disasters, even general research about science (Vosoughi et al., 2018). Falsified news is also almost new information, which appeals to the human propensity to share new information.
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As soon as human beings were able to store and transmit thoughts and ideas, there was always the possibility of fake news. Extensive misinterpretation and misinformation of events, especially on social media outlets, is becoming so prevalent the World Economic Forum has listed Fake News as one of the main threats to society.
The term “fake news” entered American political discourse during the 2016 election with both Democrats and Republicans charging each other and the media with generating fake news. Ever since, there have been countless stories about how public opinions are manipulated for political gain. Fabricated stories and rumors have been around for as long as humans have lived in communities.
Curating information, for journalistic purpose, especially for mass public consumption is a delicate exercise. More so, it creates a favorable medium for the spread of half-truths and misleading pieces of information. This research paper looks to examine the origins of fake news and the similarities across centuries of fake news now, compared to fake news a few thousand years ago. One thing that is clear is that despite a financial incentive being common across different millennia, now, more than ever, there is a certain pressure for media houses to churn out article after article and news piece after news piece.
This is intended to drive internet traffic and viewership towards these websites and articles, which then translates to advertising revenue from online advertisers. It is a serious matter now, especially with the ever-growing conversion of society into a 24-hour news cycle society. It is this sort of pressure that would cause an overlooking of due process in the course of authentic journalistic production (Kadakas, 2017).
Literature Review
The ability to have information that may or may not be passed around has been a prized human trait for many centuries now. Information gives one power. Writing done on stone and papyrus leaves came about two to three millennia ago. Information was normally borne by pack leaders like kings, military commanders, emperors and religious leaders. The ones with control of information and the means of how to distribute information naturally became leaders. Knowledge is power indeed.
When Johann von Gutenberg invented the printing press, it became possible to spread information and literacy more widely. Greater percentages of literate people however also meant that it was more difficult to to mislead then by misrepresenting the written word (Darnton, 2017). It also became economically viable to curate and sell information, since literary levels were high enough. The ability to write clearly, persuasively and authoritatively about any given topic quickly became a strong skill to have. Leaders began to either become good writers themselves or seek good writers to have in their fold. Books, pamphlets and newspapers quickly became the main media through which information was transmitted.
This proliferation of information created a ripe environment for the first instances of fake news. For instance, in 1710 in his essay ‘The Art of Political Lying’, Jonathan Swift wrote about the extent of the harm that half-truths and plain untruths could cause (Swift, 1710). He said ‘Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.’ As the number of modes of transmitting news and information grew, the consequences of fake news became graver. Purveyors of fake news were beginning to be seen as evil parties looking to cause harm to individuals, groups or governments.
As the 20th century came to a close, the advent of the internet gave a dramatically new and effective means for spreading fake news on an increasingly viral scale. Availing information on the interwebs became a new way to provide information to the public instantly. Financial incentives are now the main motivations for fake news because the internet revenues originate mainly from advertisers. Fake news has become a global issue that affects the core of contemporary information technology. It has gone from a charge hurled during an American political campaign to an issue shaping global political discourse.
How Fake News Spreads
Fake news pieces or articles usually make use of a complex environment of websites, social media accounts and blogging sites. The ease with which information can be shared and new connections made on social media, makes it easy for influential figures online to become sources of falsified information (Menczer, 2016). Cultic followings are easy to establish, creating perfect conditions for confirmation bias and selective exposure (Conover et al., 2012). Most of the fake news that gets spread is not from ordinary internet users. It is from celebrities and accounts with high numbers of followers.
Therefore, the more people and internet traffic you can direct to your domain, regardless of the means or validity of your content, the more money you may make from advertisers. Additionally, the human being is attracted to rumors, unlikely events, scandals, big news and innuendo. Sensational and shocking reporting sticks to the memory. These two, financial reward and human nature, provide very strong incentives for fake news.
Advances in technology have increased the reach of news and caused a democratization of global data consumption. Merits are easy to see that are associated with instantaneous access to news, data and information. The spread and distribution of information allows for ideas to be shared more profusely. Although the advent of social media platforms has dramatically changed the reach and impact of fake news as a whole, historians such as Carter want to remind Americans that concerns about truth and the role of the press have been playing out since its earliest broadside days. Previously unreachable areas also get access, providing a multitude of choices and points of views for consumers.
However, in a largely unregulated medium, supported and driven by advertising, the incentive for good is often outweighed by the incentive to make money, and this has a major impact on how the medium develops over time. Proliferation of fake news is one outcome. While the existence of fake news is not new, the speed at which it travels and the global reach of the technology that can spread it are unprecedented. Fake news exists in the same context as real news on the internet. The problem seems to be distinguishing between what is fake and what is real.
The handmaiden of marketing has been advertising and public relations. The goal was not only to shape public opinion but to shape the media that delivered the news and influenced public opinion. This was a difficult task. Advertising is extremely expensive and this limits on its use. Shaping news stories was even harder. Editors controlled the content, and they were difficult to persuade on a large scale. Moreover, there were multiple newspapers and networks, many of which were biased, but the biases balanced out.
The single most important characteristic of web-based advertising is that it is cheap and can reach large numbers of people. When we look at Cambridge Analytica, we see viral marketing at play. Through Facebook, the company received data that had a specificity unavailable to older marketing methods. It allowed the Trump campaign to identify targets, reach them with uniquely effective messages, and have those messages be forwarded to and seen by millions of people.
There is nothing new in lying to the public and other nations. It is sometimes essential, sometimes effective. What is new is the amount of information on the audience that is available, the ability to segment the audience to more refined degrees, and the ability to reach a large audience at low cost. Some see the internet as a democratizing force in this regard. But the problem is that the democratizing element was rapidly identified as an opportunity for marketers of goods and services and later for political actors. The public was broken down into tribes bombarded by different sources.
Having differences of opinion is part of a healthy democracy, but the differences were so stark that they eliminated the opportunity for debate between factions. In other words, segmentation shattered the political culture. The isolation of factions from each other and the sense of absolute righteousness, coupled with the demonization of others, have grown to levels we haven’t seen before.
Google, Facebook and other internet behemoths have said that they are going to be hiring a lot of people to review content and enforce their terms of service and keep fake and illegal information off their platform. The opaqueness of these platforms and their power and the fact that so much influence has moved on to them is something that needs to be paid attention to (Lazer & Baum, 2017). It is imperative to make sure that they don't turn from places where misinformation is running rampant to places that are so locked down that they are inhibiting speech.
In one of the first academic studies about the consumption of fake news, researchers at Princeton, Dartmouth and the University of Exeter estimated that about 25 percent of Americans visited a fake news website in a six-week period around the time of the 2016 US election. The researchers also found that the visits were highly concentrated - 10% of readers made 60% of the visits. And crucially, the researchers concluded that fake news does not crowd out hard news consumption. The reach was relatively wide, but not so deep. To say it's poisoning our democracy or it won this person an election, we need a lot more research to be able to say that.
Conclusion
Alongside worries about the power of the social media companies, the experts also have concerns about the power of governments. Sometimes well-intentioned but ill-informed legislators will overreach and do more harm that the problem they are trying to fix, with legislation on fake news. One such legislation came into effect on 1st January in Germany. The law demands that social media sites quickly remove hate speech, fake news and illegal material or face fines. Beyond fines, fact-checkers are also getting more and more work to curb fake news. The relevance of fake news has increased. For media outlets, the ability to attract viewers to their websites is necessary to generate online advertising revenue. If publishing a story with false content attracts users, this benefits advertisers and improves ratings. Easy access to online revenue, increased political polarization, and the popularity of social media have all been implicated in the spread of fake news which competes with legitimate news. Hostile government operatives have also been implicated in generating and propagating fake news, particularly during elections. The proliferation of fake news waters down serious and sincere media coverage. This makes it harder for well-intentioned journalists to cover serious matters and events. Anonymous sources and websites make it all the more difficult to find and prosecute these sources of misguiding information and hold them to account. Fake news causes death and injury. Groups and individuals have been attacked due to wrong information disseminated by fake news media. Other instances of death have been caused by Islamic purveyors of fake news claiming the harmfulness of initiatives such as vaccination of toddlers, resulting in the death of millions of them in parts of the world.
References
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Himma-Kadakas, M. (2017). Alternative facts and fake news entering journalistic content production cycle. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal , 9 (2), 25.
Jonathan Swift, “The Art of Political Lying,” Examiner , no. 14 (November 9, 1710), para. 9, repr. in Richard Nordquist, “The Art of Political Lying, by Jonathan Swift,” ThoughtCo., last updated March 20, 2016, https://www.thoughtco.com/art-of-political-lying-by-swift-1690138 .
Matthew A. Baum and David Lazer, “Google and Facebook Aren’t Fighting Fake News with the Right Weapons,” op-ed, Los Angeles Times , May 8, 2017, www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-baum-lazer-how-to-fight-fake-news-20170508-story.html .
Michela Del Vicario, Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zollo, Fabio Petroni, Antonio Scala, Guido Caldarelli, H. Eugene Stanley, and Walter Quattrociocchi, “The Spreading of Misinformation Online,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113, no. 3 (January 19, 2016): 534, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517441113 .
Robert Darnton, “The True History of Fake News,” NYR Daily (blog), New York Review of Books, February 13, 2017, http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/02/13/the-true-history-of-fake-news/ .
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