News media are constantly being maligned, and there is a prevailing perception that media workers ended up in the profession because they did not apply themselves in school. Day in, day out they are accused of disseminating misinformation and even creating “fake news.”
However, those levying these criticisms should ask themselves if they are prepared to take responsibility for the articles that they “like” or share online.
The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, published by the school’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, last month ran a peer-reviewed article titled “Exposure to Social Engagement Metrics Increases Vulnerability to Misinformation.”
The study found that the lower the credibility of a post, the higher its various social engagement metrics such as “likes” or shares were, and this made people more prone to like or share it and less likely to fact-check it.
The researchers in the study designed a news literacy game simulating a social media feed on a platform similar to Facebook or Twitter, and collected data from more than 8,500 accounts. It was conducted from May 2018 to November last year.
None of the findings were new to the purveyors of misinformation and content farms: It is the reason fake accounts bloat the numbers of “likes” and amount of times an article is shared, regardless of what algorithm is used.
The study highlights the herd mentality aspect of human nature, in which people think that if everyone does a certain thing, then it does not matter if they do it, too, and that the responsibility of the action is shared between all involved.
When the number of people involved reaches a certain level, the individual feels free from all responsibility for the outcome. Therefore, the more people share or like a post, the less it matters if an individual follows suit.
Chains of transmission on social media rely on interactions between people, and naturally the transmission chain of false news reports is no exception.
If people feel no responsibility for liking or sharing, they do not have to think about it, and do so almost as a knee-jerk reaction.
This is, of course, perfect for disseminating misinformation.
It is precisely because social media users and the original posters are links in the chain that they bear a share of the responsibility. Do not pass the buck onto news media or media workers.
It is the responsibility of everyone to ask themselves whether they have shared articles from an unknown source, or whether they have shared them without knowing whether they were genuine.
People should ask themselves whether they have the ability or the willingness to fact-check a suspect article before they pass it along, and whether they are willing to accept responsibility for having done so.
The Taiwan FactCheck Center has been promoting fact-checking tools that people who want to use social media responsibly can employ, and which are no more difficult to use than search engines.
If people can establish a sense of responsibility in how they engage with social media, as well as use some basic fact-checking techniques, rather than hiding behind the herd, perhaps they could, even in a small way, mitigate the polarization of society that social media are perpetuating.
Chang Yueh-han is an adjunct assistant professor of journalism at Shih Hsin University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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