Essay: Impact of Fake News on People's Beliefs and Consequences

This essay delves into the significant impact of fake news on individuals' beliefs and comprehension, particularly within the context of social media's influence. It explores how the spread of misinformation erodes trust and distorts perceptions, leading people to question authentic news sources. The essay investigates the motives behind the proliferation of fake news, such as the pursuit of popularity and financial gain. Furthermore, it outlines the potential consequences of being unable to discern between genuine and fabricated information, including poor decision-making, financial losses, and erosion of trust. The essay concludes by emphasizing the far-reaching effects of fake news on shaping opinions and influencing societal behaviors.

RUNNING HEAD: Media
Media

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Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to provide brief information about the impact of fake news on the
people worldwide. People read and gain information from social media websites that are now
days become one of the biggest sources of information and if such sources are unauthentic then it
affects badly to the mindset of people. The below mentioned report explains the reason why
people or blogs spread fake news in the environment and the possible consequences of this act. It
also explain the consequences if people are unable to differentiate between right or wrong in the
environment. Further, more details about the report are discussed below:
Thesis Statement:
The essay elaborates the impact of fake news on the beliefs and understanding of people along
with its consequences.
Paragraph 1: Purpose to state the impact of fake news on belief of people
Topic Sentence: Fake news negatively affects the belief of people.
News is one of the crucial parts of every person’s life that help them to connect with the outer
world. Also, with the invention of social media and internet, people have started using it
constantly in order to attain information about the world. However sadly, fake news spread
through internet and social media divert the minds of people in the wrong direction, it also
distorts the belief of people even after being debunked (Berkowitz, and Schwartz 2016).
It should be noted that social media and internet has taken boom since last ten years as people
have started to shift their interest these aspects. Resulting to which these aspects have started
influencing people in initiating decisions in the environment. One such article of Vox stated that
1 in every 5 people that their political opinion towards certain things changes due to social media
(Romano 2018). Fake news on these platforms make people trust on wrong aspects that
misbalance their trust level in the environment. People start to believe on wrong facts and when
they get to know about the truth, their trust on the social media pages depletes that makes them
vulnerable to trust on any other news present on the internet (Balmas 2014). So, it should be
noted that the impact of fake news on people is very adverse as it leads them to rethink before

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making any opinion towards any news present in the environment. This aspect also makes people
judge things differently and creates negative and wrong opinion towards them. The political
news is one of the biggest field where fake news is being spread mostly. Resulting of which, the
people loses interest in politics and create opinion due to which they given vote to wrong
political party in the society (Ahmed, Traore, and Saad 2017).
Paragraph 2: Purpose to explain why pages spread fake news
Topic Sentence: There are numerous reasons for which pages spread fake news
Most of the people/ blogs etc. spread fake news to attain popularity in the external market. It
should be noted that as fake news is spread more vigorously in the external environment; than
true and authentic news that influences the people to spread fake news and attain identification
worldwide. The biggest reason due to which pages or blogs spread fake news in the environment
is due to the fact that they want to get famous in the target market. It should be noted that as lies
spread faster than the truth, that attracts these social media groups/ pages/ people in the society to
get famous using wrongful means (Tandoc, Lim, and Ling 2018).
Apart from getting famous, earning money fast is another motive that influences people to spread
fake news on social media and internet. It is known to all that internet gives a person optimum
sum of money without even paying several costs to it. It easily helps people to get paid and
promoted itself, so earning money is another strong motive that influence these people and pages
to spread fake news on these platforms (Torres, Gerhart, and Negahban 2018).
Paragraph 3: Purpose to elaborate possible Consequences of fake news
Topic Sentence: There are several consequences if people are unable to judge between true and
fake news.
The biggest of fake news presented are real or true news is that people starting to generate hatred
towards fake things. As discussed above that news stories have a major impact on the lives of
people, due to which such news influence them to generate sympathy or hatred towards certain
things if they are unable to understand the difference real or true news (Lohr 2018). If people are
unable to understand the difference between true and fake news then there might be many
possible consequences of this event. People will certain take wrong decisions if they do not have

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the capability to differentiate between right and wrong. Wrong decision will reduce the esteem of
a person as well. It should be noted that all people make decision on the basis of the information
that they receive from the market, resulting to which wrong decision can affect their image and
lower their interest in certain things believing that all news are fake only. Apart from creating
trust issues among people, it can also affect people in financial terms as well. People posts many
fake news that says investment in one company gives prosperity to people in the market,
however in real world scenario the opposite occurs. Thus, in this way people might face financial
loss as well if they are unable to judge between true and fake information (Rubin, Chen, and
Conroy 2015).
Conclusion
Thus, the essay has defined that fake news creates a major impact on the beliefs of people. As
this news misbalance the level of their trust resulting to which it becomes difficult for people to
even trust the real and trustable news present on internet. Fake news decay thee core of the
information and mold it into another direction that makes people judge on their perceptions and
way of thinking. Further, the above mentioned essay adequately explained the consequence of
people unable to differentiate between real and fake news, its impact on them and the reasons
why people spread fake news on internet and social media.

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References
Ahmed, H., Traore, I. and Saad, S., 2017, October. Detection of Online Fake News Using N-
Gram Analysis and Machine Learning Techniques. In International Conference on Intelligent,
Secure, and Dependable Systems in Distributed and Cloud Environments (pp. 127-138).
Springer, Cham.
Balmas, M., 2014. When fake news becomes real: Combined exposure to multiple news sources
and political attitudes of inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism. Communication Research, 41(3),
pp.430-454.
Berkowitz, D. and Schwartz, D.A., 2016. Miley, CNN and The Onion: When fake news becomes
realer than real. Journalism Practice, 10(1), pp.1-17.
Lohr., S. (2018). It’s True: False News Spreads Faster and Wider. And Humans Are to Blame.
[online]. Available from < https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/technology/twitter-fake-news-
research.html>
Romano, A., (2018) 1 in 5 people say they change their political views due to social media
[online]. Available from < https://www.vox.com/2016/11/8/13563874/social-media-political-
impact-study-research> [Accessed on: 11 June 2018]
Rubin, V.L., Chen, Y. and Conroy, N.J., 2015. Deception detection for news: three types of
fakes. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 52(1), pp.1-4.
Tandoc Jr, E.C., Lim, Z.W. and Ling, R., 2018. Defining “fake news” A typology of scholarly
definitions. Digital Journalism, 6(2), pp.137-153.
Torres, R., Gerhart, N. and Negahban, A., 2018, January. Combating Fake News: An
Investigation of Information Verification Behaviors on Social Networking Sites. In Proceedings
of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.