COMM 6034: Evaluating Facebook's Handling of 2016 Election Fake News

This report addresses the influence of fake news, particularly on Facebook and Google, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, focusing on the election's impact on Donald Trump's victory. It highlights concerns about internet platforms permitting the spread of misinformation and examines Facebook's response to criticism, including Mark Zuckerberg's initial denial of any significant impact. The report references specific instances of fake news stories trending on Facebook, such as fabricated celebrity endorsements, and suggests measures to combat disinformation, advocating for transparency, open debate, and the protection of privacy and freedom of expression. It cautions against centralized censorship and draconian rules, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach to address fake news while preserving the health of social discourse. The document concludes by urging careful consideration and implementation of these measures to prevent similar events in the future.

RUNNING HEAD: LETTER REGARDING A PRESS RELEASE
Influence of Fake News
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1Influence of Fake News
10.08.2019
1 Hacker Way (aka 1601 Willow Road)
Menlo Park, California, U.S.
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,
This is to address you that it has been brought to notice that the recent U.S election
and victory of Mr. Donald Trump was highly influencing by fake news. These fake news
were report to generate from two of biggest companies of internet in the world, one being
Google and the other unfortunately being Facebook. There are rumors going on that the
internet is permitting such fake sites giving news on a purpose (Lazer et al. 2018). On
Monday, right after when we and Google responded making clear statements that these sort
of nuisance will not be tolerated and all the misinformation in regards to fake sites of news
and alike sources of revenue, people including celebrities of America are tossing towards
Trump. Assembling of plants seems to be getting closed in Mexico, then shifting backwards
to Ohio. Barrack Obama admits about the backstabbing activities that went on Facebook
(Han,2017).
After your statement, “it is a pretty crazy idea” that the “fake news on Facebook,
which is a very small amount of content, influenced the election in any way’ your public
relations officer was asked to reconcile the statement made by the analysis site of trend
known as Trendolizer. The site stated that “He should take a look at the most shared stories
on his website.” Dozens of Stories without any basis to reality are present there in favor of
Donald Trump that broke the algorithm of Facebook trending from Monday to Tuesday after

2Influence of Fake News
the new elected president took over his personal account on Twitter to continuously deride
the checked facts from newspapers such as The New York Times. Before Monday,
specifically on AmericanNews.com and Facebook, Denzel Washington one of the biggest
celebrities America, offered an endorsement to Mr. Trump. This story got circulated 10,000
times by a single lead- American News’s page in Facebook just on the web within first six
hours (Nytimes, 2019).
Some of the suggestions for resolving this issues can be undertaken so that there is no
question as such and not any sort of influence gets created or interpreted to be more specific
by the masses.
 Nobody becomes successful in any system, which rewards to lie. If there are stories
that state Pope Francis has been endorsing some candidate, they will be getting more
readership than any sort of legitimate news. Meanwhile, other countless articles that
are bogus achieve a trending status, there gets a real problem we will be needing a
free field for debating openly where a general coherence towards truthfulness can be
safely assumed. Disinformation is considered treasonous.
 Fixing news that are fake along with some sort of hate speech issue cannot be
achievable with total centralized censorship. Therefore, appealing to it may seem to
an individual has been abused by trolls of racism. Whenever this occurs via
methodology of non-public vows, the worry should be about any single institution
that holds a power of unilateral to decide what makes the truth. We should not impose
any sort of draconian rules as well that requires potentially vulnerable masses for
identifying themselves online (Fish, 2019).
 Freedom of privacy and expression are not just only concerned with human rights but
also they are very vital for the health of social organism. The culture of this current,

3Influence of Fake News
leaderless and digital system of interconnection that shares information must get
allowed to grow naturally on its individual terms.
Therefore, if these measures are considered and implemented carefully then there no
chance of such events to occur in future.
Sincerely,
Name of the Student.

4Influence of Fake News
References
Fish, S. (2019). The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious
Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trum.
Han, F. K. (2017). The Rise of Trump and Its Global Implications-America At War With
Itself.
Lazer, D. M., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F., ... &
Schudson, M. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094-1096.
Nytimes. (2019). Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Retrieved 10 August 2019.