{"id":88162,"date":"2016-11-25T09:05:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-25T14:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ict-pulse.com\/?p=88162"},"modified":"2017-04-07T19:11:32","modified_gmt":"2017-04-08T00:11:32","slug":"blurred-lines-real-news-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/2016\/11\/blurred-lines-real-news-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Blurred lines: real news versus fake news"},"content":{"rendered":"
Fake news is all the rage these days, and to varying degrees, we are all getting duped.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n A just published study conducted by the Stanford Graduate School of Education, of a cross-section of students in the US, found that a significant portion of those surveyed could not distinguish between real news and fake news:<\/span><\/p>\n Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More than 7,800 student responses were collected.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n In exercise after exercise, the researchers were “shocked” \u2014 their word, not ours \u2014 by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n The students displayed a “stunning and dismaying consistency” in their responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again. They weren’t looking for high-level analysis of data but just a “reasonable bar” of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from neutral sources and ads from articles..<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n “Many assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally savvy about what they find there,” the researchers wrote. “Our work shows the opposite.”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n
\nOver the past week or so, there has been considerable discussion about the proliferation of fake news on the Internet, especially on social media, and the extent to which it may have affected the results of the recent United States (US) presidential election. Currently, most major news platforms use social networks, especially Twitter and Facebook to not only break the latest news stories, but also to point to published articles on their own websites. However, as we, here at ICT Pulse, had begun to discuss in our own recently published article, <\/span>Have we gotten so proficient in gaming the Internet it is losing its lustre?<\/span><\/i><\/a>, increasingly, the Internet has become a numbers game: number of followers; number of page views, likes, retweets; search engine ranking, etc. Hence, should we be surprised when people start to game the Internet \u2013 and all of us \u2013 with fake news?<\/span><\/p>\n