Social media has become the new source of the news or what we call news… where opinions are taken as fact and amount of shares become breaking stories.
South Africans (and the world) are being exposed to increasing amounts of fake news online, particularly through false articles posted and shares on Facebook.
Our social media newsfeeds are being layered with “news” websites that are posting breaking news – often with gripping headlines – which are completely fake.
Just this week. A website has been doing the rounds ‘reporting’ on the fact that South Africans who bath more than once a week and drink more than one glass of water a day will ‘face the law’.
Are you joking? On what planet could the government lawfully institute something like this… or even more so, actually implement it?
During election week, 3 separate Facebook Pages (Gossip Mill Mzanzi, Mzansi Live & African News Updates) dominated the social media space with their bout of fake news.
The biggest story was a political article stating that “over 80 000 ballot papers already marked as ANC votes have been found with 2 people being arrested”
The article had no truth behind it but was being shared like wildfire… the IEC eventually released a statement saying that the story was not true.
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Also, something like this, with such a massive political stance, could cause potential voters to not trust the system… which means they might choose not to vote.
It’s just irresponsible!
In the digital age, it is easier than ever to publish false information, which is quickly shared and taken to be true – as we often see in emergency situations, when news is breaking in real time.
As reported in ‘The Guardian‘ one example among many, during the November 2015 Paris terror attacks, rumours quickly spread on social media that the Louvre and Pompidou Centre had been hit, and that François Hollande had suffered a stroke.
Sometimes rumours like these spread out of panic, sometimes out of malice, and sometimes deliberate manipulation, in which a corporation or regime pays people to convey their message.
In the case of the “80 000 ballot papers” articles, the websites in question are layered with advertising & every click you give them, just by sharing, also give them real money.
It’s called clickbaiting, and the web content is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching thumbnail pictures to attract click-throughs and to encourage forwarding of the material.
Gossip Mill Mzanzi deleted the original story… 24 hours after posting it. The site received massive amounts of backlash, thousands of messages, write ups & comments from people on social media calling them out on their fake articles.
But sites like these, continue to write fake articles in the hopes of getting people to click through to their website.
The best way to stop the “fake news” is to not engage with it. The most important step in that process would be to verify the story in the first place.
So how do you know if a story is real or not? Well… here are some tips:
- Is that news anywhere else? Nope… then its not real.
- Can it be found on google? Nope… not real either!
- Does the name of the website have ‘gossip’ in the title? Most probably not real.
- Does the title make you really angry? Usually click-baiting!
Common elements of click-baiting:
- Establishing shot: An ordinary state creates normalcy.
- Unexpected events: Something incredible suddenly happens.
- Cliffhanger (Zeigarnik effect from psychology): Then this or that happened. But what happened is not mentioned in the title.
- Call-to-action: In most cases, elements are also used to entice the user to click such as ‘do not miss out’ or ‘must see’.
- Strong adjectives: unbelievable, startling, heartbreaking, etc.
- Superlatives: the best, the greatest, or the most unimaginable.
- Active verbs: learning, exploring, laughing, or crying.
- Internet slang: OMG, WOW, or LOL act as eye catchers in headlines and as identification with the internet community.
- Numbers: Numbers stand out from the text and generate attention. They are mostly used in lists.
If you want to go the extra step of helping social media in general, report the pages to Facebook admin. They don’t stand for fake news, click baiting or spam.
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