Misinformation and Conspiracy?
To me, one disadvantage to social media is the maelstrom of inaccurate facts posing as truth. Turner & Hicks (2017) state, “Day after day, individuals fall prey to them, hope they are true, and share the misinformation with their friends” (p.104). Why? I believe the problem is not knowing who started the information. Let’s face it, we would not turn our television to Sesame Street for the nightly news. If we saw Grover spouting a political diatribe, we would think it was funny, not facts. What happens when you try to explain the inconsistency with facts on social media? Good people with good intentions act like Grover trying to find the fly in the soup. Please see the video below.
When you try to silence the misinformation from your own social network, you find good people with bad habits. Li et al. (2019) state, “Due to the distributed and decentralized nature of social media, respective content that contains misinformation is usually propagated without any type of moderation, which may mislead the public and have a profound real-world impact” (p.693). It is easier to just repost, share, or like without taking the time to say, “Is your name, Grover?” This does irritate me quite a bit. It may be surprising, but there are ways to combat social media misinformation, “A promising solution is to utilize the crowdsourcing wisdom that pushes the suspected misinformation to relevant users based on the expertise and collects the assessments to judge the credibility” (Li et al., 2019, p.693). When will this be implemented? I’m sorry to say, it’s still in the theoretical stage.
I guess it falls down to whether or not you want to be the social media police. We can find out what is correct and what isn't from taking the time to do just a few web searches. Turner & Hicks (2017) want "to encourage readers to check Snopes to evaluate these kinds of posts before resharing with their other networks" (p.104). Factcheck is another place people can check information to find out if it is true or false. I just don't want to offend a good person who got duped into believing someone else's lies. I might take the time to do some research, but that doesn't mean the person I try to help is willing to look at it. Some people read posts "without challenging the claims, evidence, or warrants that make up the argument" (Turner & Hicks, 2017, p.105). I don't think we will ever be able to get rid of all the misinformation, but just getting rid of half would be astounding. When the day comes that social media purges the misinformation, I will celebrate. I hope it comes soon. For now, I’ll just keep picturing Grover writing every post.
I guess it falls down to whether or not you want to be the social media police. We can find out what is correct and what isn't from taking the time to do just a few web searches. Turner & Hicks (2017) want "to encourage readers to check Snopes to evaluate these kinds of posts before resharing with their other networks" (p.104). Factcheck is another place people can check information to find out if it is true or false. I just don't want to offend a good person who got duped into believing someone else's lies. I might take the time to do some research, but that doesn't mean the person I try to help is willing to look at it. Some people read posts "without challenging the claims, evidence, or warrants that make up the argument" (Turner & Hicks, 2017, p.105). I don't think we will ever be able to get rid of all the misinformation, but just getting rid of half would be astounding. When the day comes that social media purges the misinformation, I will celebrate. I hope it comes soon. For now, I’ll just keep picturing Grover writing every post.
References
Li, G., Dong, M., Yang, F., Zeng, J., Yuan, J., Jin, C., Hung, N.Q.V., Cong, P.T., & Zheng. B. (2020). Misinformation-oriented expert finding in social networks. World Wide Web 23, 693–714. https://doi-org.ezproxy.montevallo.edu/10.1007/s11280-019-00717-6
Sesame Street. (2008, August 6). Sesame Street: There's a Fly in the Soup | Waiter Grover [Video File]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/1C8nl8eBoq0
Turner, K.H., & Hicks, T. (2017). Teaching adolescents to read and write digital texts: Argument in the real world. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Your post made me think about when I first turned 18 and was able to vote for the first time. I was scared to death because I was attending a liberal arts college and it felt like EVERYONE was against what I grew up believing. I literally called my mom daily and asking her opinion and she would always give me websites that would share more "truth" than the others. However, when it came to social media... I felt like all of my friends had the same opinion about elections and who I wanted to vote for. I do not post anything political because of my profession and I do not want to get bad responses, however Turner and Hicks (2017) said "in our age of distraction, simply hitting "like" on someone else's post is an endorsement." (p. 108) When I read that I was like...woah. It is so true! Everyday I see things that say "so and so liked his post and you might like it too". Social media has taken over our lives and it is crazy how much it knows about us. I am always so concerned about people's thoughts about me, but honestly, what does my accounts say about me?! Social media gives us a front that we don't technically have to show. Which brings me to my next point that Turner and Hicks (2017) discussed. Leverage. Postings almost give anyone leverage over the other to create further action. Does the post make you mad? sad? happy? Most of these emotions result in reaction and therefore another post.
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Turner, K.H., & Hicks, T. (2017). Teaching adolescents to read and write digital texts: Argument in the real world. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Darren I agree with what you said about people being lazy when sharing a post before checking. I get very frustrated at the number of missing children posts I see that aren't even missing anymore. It upsets me when people share those posts too because they have people looking for someone that has already been found when there are people missing that actually need to be found. I always check to see if the person is missing, and then notify the person of the post that they have been found, if they have.
ReplyDeleteAnother post that has gained popularity is giveaway posts. Turner and Hicks (2017) discuss this when they said, "just in case this is true, I'm posting" (p. 103). I have seen fake giveaway posts for Home Depot,Toyota, and even restaurants. All these posts originate from a Facebook page, so I go to that page. When I do this the Facebook page is always new with only one or two posts. When I try and notify the person that shared it to their Facebook wall I get the same response that Turner and Hicks mentioned above. I hate being the Facebook police, but I also hate false information being shared.
References:
Turner, K.H., & Hicks, T. (2017). Teaching adolescents to read and write digital texts: Argument in the real world. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.