The lack of social media authenticity allows fake news to grow freely. We now live in a world where life in social media is just as important as real life itself, social media has become a very crucial part of everyday interaction, the issues on the table is when social media is abused by those with agenda to manipulate people into believing something that is nothing more than a misinformation. Even though the term fake news only gain popularity in recent years, the concept itself is nothing new. Back on the first and second world war we an see how propaganda was used to manipulate masses, how news and information was selectively used in order to create a biased narrative, this so called misinformation now spread rather quickly in field of new social media era due to the lack of curation and authenticity in social media. Because unlike offline news such as magazine and newspaper, in social media we do not need to go through a vigorous process to publish a content, this might benefit small stories that need more media attention or news that being repressed by the media itself, but they also create loopholes for fake news and biased information thrive to exist. (kania)
The start of fake news seemed to start around the ages of early printings in the 16th and the 17th century, in the form of pamphlets or news book describing monsters and creatures in a very detailed manner. Though not truly news these were the first accounts of fake information being spread out to the public masses, but in 1833 the first truly modern newspaper The Sun was founded. The Sun at the time was funded by advertisers and not subscriptions, that is why at the time readership is very important and so the moon hoax was created. Some would argue this is the very first accounts of fake news or hoax, though the moon hoax would later be exposed by rival newspaper. After this little incident, the 19th century embrace more real and grounded stories than made up ones.
Though in the recent years things have changed in the news industry because now the internet exist, and because of this comes the realization of abusing internet traffic and advertiser revenue by using fake news. Similar to the case before fake news thrive in “readership” though it’s now is more about getting people to click on their website, advertising in the internet only cares about viewership the more people that sees the ad the better the ad and the more revenue the people hosting a website get. Because of that reason we see a resurgence of fake news growing in the social media landscape, because authenticity is not what the fake news curators want, they just care for the clicks. By using shocking titles and interesting though fake topics these curators could get people to click on their website and then share it to their friends, and those people would then click on the website then share it to their other friends, rinse and repeat until the fake news gets exposed. By the time they got exposed the curator already went away with quite a bit of revenue. (Eca)
Especially throughout this globalization era, when we can communicate and share everything easily with social media. Social media has been the biggest source of spreading a hoax, particularly via the WhatsApp app. Because in WhatsApp you can share everything, anything without any filter, because of that, WhatsApp susceptible with all the fake news out there. Through WhatsApp group, some people can spread a non-valid broadcast and the effect of the broadcast they send, it can cost chaos between the members of the group reverse to the different opinion and which "side" they root. Not only WhatsApp, but another social media app has also been a large fake news industry, such as Instagram since we can freely upload anything without any filter-post policies on that app, the only way you can get banned on Instagram is when you post pictures or videos about explicit content, otherwise for the hoax and fake news they still let it roaming all over the internet. (azlifa)
People who use social media will easily follow and trapped into the news without knowing the truth. Hoaxes about important people die such as artists, musicians, and even politicians often occur. About two weeks ago, fake news spread that Indonesia's 3rd president, BJ Habibie, had died while his condition at that time was still being treated in intensive care at the hospital. The news began circulating through social media Facebook to Whatsapp. Then the fake news was clarified directly by his nephew to the online news platform, Detik.com. Other than that, hoaxes such as food that is often consumed by the public are said to be haram also often occurs. The hoax makes its consumers trust the news and afraid to consume it again. All these hoaxes spread because the seller competing with each other. (Najlaa)
Source :
Fox, J. C., 2007, "Film propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany : World War II cinema.", Oxford:Berg.
Standageis,Tom. “THE TRUE HISTORY OF FAKE NEWS”. 1843magazine, june/july 2017, https://www.1843magazine.com/technology/rewind/the-true-history-of-fake-news
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