SAT0100/SAT0105: Examining the Impact of Fake News on Politics

This essay examines the proliferation of fake news, particularly in the context of the decline of traditional media and the rise of non-traditional outlets. It analyses the causes behind the rise of fake news, including the drive for viewership, the influence of social media, and the actions of political figures. The essay then focuses on the 2016 US Presidential election as a case study, illustrating how fake news influenced voter opinions and the election's outcome. Finally, it proposes solutions such as using technology to detect and limit the spread of misinformation and promoting media literacy to encourage critical evaluation of news sources. The essay concludes by emphasizing the need for a combined approach involving technological solutions and public awareness campaigns to effectively address the issue of fake news. Desklib provides access to similar essays and study resources for students.

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Law
Fake News

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Fake news is referred as emotionally-charged bits of disinformation which has become a
substantial issue in today’s digital era. As the number of news outlets increases, it has
become easier for them to constantly repeat their information which travels much faster
than compared to traditional news outlets due to the ubiquitous nature of the internet
(Lazer et al., 2018). Fake news is defined as a type of propaganda or yellow journalism that
consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes which are spread by news outlets through
broadcast, online social media or print outlets. The popularity of fake news resulted in
contributing to the outcomes of political or economic events that adversely affect parties on
a global stage (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017). This essay will evaluate how and why the issue
of fake news has increased, and a recent political event will be evaluated to analyse how
fake news contributed to its outcome. This essay will also provide some possible solutions
that assist in addressing the issue of fake news.
Fake news is not a recent phenomenon; instead, it has been deeply rooted in journalism. In
1690, a newspaper in North America was shut down by British officials because they
fabricated information. In nineteenth-century, many times newspapers did not agree with
basic facts to increase their sales. In 1835, the New York Sun issued a series of newspaper
reports regarding the ‘Great Moon Hoax’ which claimed that there was an alien civilisation
on the moon. Due to this fake news, the sales of the Sun increased considerably, and it
started selling 19,000 copies from 8,000 copies (Standage, 2017). It shows that one of the
key reasons for the popularity of fake news is that it attracts viewership and companies rely
on these news articles to increase their sales. In the golden age of 24-hours television, news
channels were struggling to provide content to their audience. Since there were no major
incidents such as the hearing of O.J. Simpson, news channels started to rely on fake news to
attract more viewership to make sure that they attract more viewers (Lazer et al., 2018).
Due to the popularity of smartphone and social media sites, it has become possible for news
outlets to connect with their audience 24x7 and the competition has become fierce. Due to
this competition, news websites use ‘click-bait’ titles to attract more traffic on their websites
which resulted in promoting fake news (Zheng et al., 2018). Most people simply read the
headlines of the online news, and they start to estimate what is inside without doing their
own research. Due to creative and click-bait titles, these news articles go viral since they are
accessed by a large number of people. Political parties and powerful figures such as Donald

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Trump also contributes to the popularity of fake news by making false accusations regarding
the opposition which resulted in making fake news a global issue (Maheshwari, 2017).
The 2016 US Presidential election was a major political event that was affected by the
popularity of fake news. People were highly engaged in this election because they were
using social media platforms to share their opinions regarding the presidential campaign
(Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017). There were many incidents when Donald Trump used online
social media sites to spread fake news. For example, he claimed after winning the election
and losing the popular vote that millions of people voted illegally whereas in reality was that
the number of fraud voters was next to none (Maheshwari, 2017). The elections were
heavily influenced by fake news, and people believed these news articles which resulted in
shaping their political decision and the ultimate outcome of the 2016 US Presidential
elections. A study conducted by Buzzfeed found that top 20 fake news articles regarding the
election received more engaged on social media sites than compared to top 20 election
stories from 19 major media outlets (Chang et al., 2016). It was also becoming extremely
difficult for people to spot fake news since they were shared by powerful people who
misused their position to gain an unfair advantage by using fake news. These incidents
resulted in promoting the campaign of Trump which leads to his win which shows how fake
news can have substantial impacts on the political outcomes.
The advancement of technology spawned the issue of fake news which is necessary to be
addressed in order to avoid its negative outcomes. Technology can be used in order to
address the issue of fake news (Lazer et al., 2018). For example, many companies such as
Facebook are using artificial intelligence (AI) in order to find out the fake news article on
their platform and avoid them from spreading. Apple has developed its own news platform
for iPhone and other iOS-based devices in which the company handpicked news articles
from major media outlets to avoid spreading fake news to its customers (Dreyfuss, 2018).
Another issue with fake news is that people spread these news articles without determining
whether they are true or not from sources such as Whatsapp. In order to address this issue,
Whatsapp has started a campaign that spread awareness regarding fake news to ensure
that people did not share them on the platform. The company has also imposed a limit on
the number of times a user can share in order to reduce the spreading of fake news (Safi,
2019). These examples show that the issue of fake news can be addressed by the use of

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technology; however, sole reliance on technology is not the only solution to this issue. It is
important that the government spread information regarding this issue between people to
make them aware regarding its negative implications to make sure that they did not believe
in these articles and check their sources before spreading the news.
In conclusion, the issue of fake news has been a part of journalism for centuries; however, it
has become a prominent issue with the popularity of smartphones and social media sites. It
has become easier for news outlets and users to check and spread fake news articles which
make it a global issue. The implications of fake news on politics can be evaluated from the
example of the 2016 US Presidential election in which fake news resulted in influencing the
opinion of voters that lead to the win of Donald Trump. This issue can be resolved by
integration of technologies and awareness campaigns to ensure that people understand this
issue and they take corrective measures to resolve this problem.

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References
Allcott, H. and Gentzkow, M. (2017) Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal
of economic perspectives, 31(2), pp.211-36.
Chang, J., Lefferman, J., Pedersen, C. and Martz, G. (2017) When Fake News Stories Make
Real News Headlines. [Online] ABC News. Available at:
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/fake-news-stories-make-real-news-headlines/story?
id=43845383 [Accessed 06/04/2019].
Dreyfuss, E. (2018) Apple Tries To Avoid Facebook's Mistakes With 2018 Midterms. [Online]
Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-news-facebook-midterm-
elections-section/ [Accessed 06/04/2019].
Lazer, D.M., Baum, M.A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A.J., Greenhill, K.M., Menczer, F., Metzger,
M.J., Nyhan, B., Pennycook, G., Rothschild, D. and Schudson, M. (2018) The science of fake
news. Science, 359(6380), pp.1094-1096.
Maheshwari, S. (2017) 10 Times Trump Spread Fake News. [Online] The New York Times.
Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/business/media/trump-fake-
news.html [Accessed 06/04/2019].
Safi, M. (2019) WhatsApp 'deleting 2m accounts a month' to stop fake news. [Online] The
Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/06/whatsapp-
deleting-two-million-accounts-per-month-to-stop-fake-news [Accessed 06/04/2019].
Standage, T. (2017) The True History Of Fake News. [Online] The Economist. Available at:
https://www.1843magazine.com/technology/rewind/the-true-history-of-fake-news
[Accessed 06/04/2019].
Zheng, H.T., Chen, J.Y., Yao, X., Sangaiah, A., Jiang, Y. and Zhao, C.Z. (2018) Clickbait
convolutional neural network. Symmetry, 10(5), p.138.