Since the 2016 presidential election in the USA, there has been a lot of hype regarding fake news. Claims of false, bad or incomplete information (misinformation or disinformation) have been popularized, and this has drawn the attention of many including social scientists.

Source

The mainstream news has it's own long and sordid history with fake news, but they want people to accept them as the only source for "real news". The general focus and claim is about false information mostly coming from alternative media sources, as if the mainstream is "clean".

The reason fake news matters in any case, is because people tacitly, unquestioningly, and unthinkingly accept what they are being told by their "trusted" source. The fake news (alternative or mainstream) gets accepted, as people are convinced it's true, and then their behavior is motivated by that narrative presented to them.

The political atmosphere has been shifting in many countries, and many don't like these changes. To explain the rise in the popularity of populist "leaders", the mainstream media say it's due to fake news; bad information. This is allegedly why more people voted for Trump in the US election of 2016. In Europe, they claim fake news has led to the rise of populist leaders that are gaining traction among people who are not satisfied with the current management of their lives by centralized authority.

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Quality

If we only have low quality information that is input as knowledge, then that is what we use to try to understand the situation and act upon it. Higher quality information will contain more knowledge that gives a better representation of the situation for us to act more accurately or wisely.

In a free market for truth, the idea is that as more contrast is brought to bear on information then people can discern which is more accurately reflecting reality, i.e. closest to the truth/reality. Think of a left-wing news agency vs. a right-wing news agency, where a political candidate did something wrong and the newspaper of their party would downplay the problem, but the opposing news agency would not. This misinformation prevents someone from having a better grasp on the truth of reality. People can eventually judge for themselves what is actually happening despite one repressing the truth of what a political candidate did.

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Attention and Information Overload

If we have too much information, like an information overload, then we can't discriminate the information as well. We have a limited attention span to receive all the information that we get exposed to. The fake news, misinformation, hoaxes and scams can and do go viral like accurate information can. People not only get suckered by false information in their political leanings, but also in their purchasing or business decisions.

Now that we are said to be in a "post-truth" world thanks to post-modernism, subjectivism, relativism and solipsism, we can supposedly trust the mainstream news to tell us what is or is not true. Sometimes claims of fake news are accurate, and sometimes the claim of fake news is the fake news, while they smear and discredit truth.

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Popular vs. Quality Information

When popularity comes into play, quality often takes a backseat as being of less salience, value or importance. Peer and other social influences can distort the perception and acquisition of information received. Our power to discern quality knowledge is diminished by information overload. Repetition is known as a way to influence people to accept something as well.

A study from last May 2017 says that a weaker discriminative power can have trade-offs with more diverse information being taken in, like the idea of a market for truth where eventually the truth will win out over falsity. But information overload and the frequency of information can lead to low-quality information being popularized or going viral. They eyeball the social media bots as a problem, which is also how fake news has fallen into the spotlight of national security forces which try to link the bots in social media as a foreign attack to compromise US democratic values. Russia has been the target, but there is little evidence to back up the claims.

Authors of the study say these bot accounts "make up a significant portion of online profiles and many of them flood social media with high volumes of low-quality information to manipulate the public discourse". Social media is just that, media that is shared and talked about. We get much of it from our friends, and most of us are driven by biases and other deficits in thinking. The posts on social are often not verified, they are only shared in most cases after a cursory glance at the title and maybe a quick scan through the page. Discernment of reality is not really being done.

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Information War

The battle is on for our minds. Ideas are being pushed, and we get sucked into them. Much of the time it's not us who have a hold or grasp on the ideas but the ideas have a hold on us instead. Fake news claims against false and true information will continue.

How far will the hype go? The creation of this problem seems to be backfiring in some cases, as people see the media engage in fake news of their own. Creating the problem of fake news could be used as part of a problem-reaction-solution thesis-antithesis to generate a reaction, and then provide a pre-determined solution.

There are already AI "helping" out, and algorithms being implemented in search engines to prevent people from accessing counter-narrative news sources. Legislation and laws to control information might be on the way. I wonder how well blockchain technology and platforms like Steem will fit into the fight to allow freedom of information to continue online. The information war is on, and more people need to get into it to liberate their minds and think better.

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Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.

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