FAKE NEWS IS THE NEW POST-TRUTH

INCIDENCE OF FAKE NEWS HAS SHOWN THAT IT HAS POTENTIAL TO SHAPE EVENTS LIKE U.S. POLLS. DC DWELLS DEEP INTO THE ISSUE:

In the rat race of the current highly competitive world, where people get replaced by gadgets, the biggest casualty is truth. As outgoing US President Barack Obama had said: “If we are not serious about facts... particularly in an age of social media... then we have problems.”

This is precisely what is happening in the technologically developed world. Traditional media has been replaced by social media, where the person disseminating information does not verify its veracity and neither does the person forwarding the information checks the credentials of the sender. The result is blurring of difference between real and fake information.

In the year that is all but over, we have fake news influencing election of the most powerful person on the earth, the US President; it almost made two countries threaten a nuclear war and it also made lakhs of Indians become paranoiac about holding the new `2,000 note.

However, many people do not seem to agree easily that they could get fooled by fake news. A study conducted by the US-based Pew Research Center brought out this dichotomy. Nearly 65 per cent people who participated in the Pew poll believed that fake news caused “a lot of confusion among people”. However, most of the participants won’t agree that they would believe in such news.

A similar study conducted by Stanford University that Americans rarely recognise false stories or biased sources.

Globally, it was found that fake news spreads faster than the real news. Experts say that one of the reasons for this could be that fake news are generally hyped-up ones which make impulsive social media users to share it among their networks.

Americans feel that Facebook and other social media companies should do more to prevent fake news from populating their social media wall.

While social media companies may try to do their bit, the experts feel people should not trust the information shared on just social media sites. They said it would be better if people check the information from other sources.

People’s opinion is crucial for shaping democracy. If people’s decision-making is based on wrong information, the rulers who are elected will be inefficient and the democratic system that empowers people will also become defective.