Published on <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/what-is-a-fake-news-c17b9fef7679?source=rss----eb297ea1161a---4">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Annalisa Valente <img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*x0Ilk2_Vt2f0UB5yzj9SzQ.jpeg">
<ul>
<li>What is fake news?</li>
</ul>
Today, most of the time spent on social networks, we are literally surrounded by fake information and hoaxes.
Wikipedia defines fake news as “a type of yellow journalism that consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via the traditional print, broadcasting news media, or via Internet-based social media.”
The relationship between information and opinion has always been ambiguous in all sectors of our life. Taking the example of the politics, there have always been people who want to give their opinion like charlatans and imposters with the only intention to make money, to have more power and collect attention.
Fake news is “news” that are not true and not certificated, they are just opinions, and those opinions are often based on wrong information.
However, we live in a democratic era and as the Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Freedom of giving their point of view is fundamental in a democracy.
Living in this time of history the problem of fake news on the social media looks like an infectious disease that spreads infecting the community and is quite hard to “cure” it.
Some time ago I conducted qualitative research with 60 participants asking them their opinions on this important subject. I learned that 70% of those people don’t know when the news is fake on the social networks, but they wouldn’t share it and spread it if they knew it was fake.
<ul>
<li>Do the social network’s influence how people think, live and vote?</li>
</ul>
There are those who believe social media have the power to influence how people think, behave or vote.
After the American election M.Z. CEO of Facebook wrote: “Our goal is to give every person a voice. We believe deeply in people. Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes”.
We don’t actually have data fake news helped Trump to win the General Election. However we can say for sure that Facebook and Twitter helped the winner to boost and to build a fidelity relationship with people influencing the way of thinking and voting.
In fact, during the American election, the social media was not only Trump’s primary communication channel, It was a platform where he started a conversation and the main interaction point with his supporters.
He and his team invested time and money to find new ways of using the social media platforms. If we want to beat him we should in the future use same means altogether.
<ul>
<li>Stopping the fake news is undemocratic?</li>
</ul>
Today democracy is under attack also in those countries where the democracy had seemed unshakable, stopping our freedom of speech is with no doubt undemocratic. Anyhow, it is important that we all stay alert and vigilant. Being vigilant doesn’t mean being undemocratic. That means that we need an educated public.
We need to recognise this subject as a problem and to invest any effort to filter or punish fake news.
We need to be championing good journalism and to reward those that help the community fight fake news. This is a revolution against how the system treats the hoaxes and fake information.
<ul>
<li>How do we know that the information is authentic and correct?</li>
</ul>
A democratic accreditation, a team of researchers, scientists and professional authorities needs to certify the source. We should do that we do with the food, advertising, and pharmaceutical industries. The goal is to educate the public and let them know when the news comes from a certified source. Allowing them to decide whether to read or share it.
<ul>
<li>Can design help to solve or at least to mitigate the problem?</li>
</ul>
I reckon that solving the fake news problem is one of the next big challenges of the digital era.
A lot of work needs to be done.
I believe we should take a stand and act: practitioners, researchers, theorists, students, journalists, publishers, and designers need to come together and to create a Manifesto with all the intentions, motives and views that help to promote a new idea of journalism in the digital era. Bringing alliance, building a big and safe community with the help of the newspaper industry and quality journalism, exploring machine learning solutions, and using design. The last but not the least one will help to show visually and in an interactive way to the community when the news comes from an authenticated source or when they are in danger.
Don’t hesitate to comment below if you have any comments or thoughts 🙂
A big thanks to Luke Devereux
<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSource=full_rss&amp;postId=c17b9fef7679" width="1" height="1" alt="stat?event=post.clientViewed&amp;referrerSou">
<hr>
<a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/what-is-a-fake-news-c17b9fef7679">The problem of fake news in the democratic era</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io">prototypr</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The problem of fake news in the democratic era

Top Stories