Social media’s viral infection; how news got sick

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

We are at the turn of a decade, and you must admit, things have changed rapidly over the last 10 years, especially in the digital world. Let us take Facebook; this platform was founded in 2004, and 15 years later, among the worlds estimated 2.62 billion social media users as of 2018 (Lane, 2019), Facebook is still the most favoured social media platform. The initial focus on Facebook is because I can bet you in the last hour; the majority of the readers have browsed on Facebook, read something on Facebook, or watched something on Facebook.

Naturally, with all good comes a little bad; with children, teenagers, young-adults, middle-age, mature, and elderly all beginning to learn more about social media, the media world has made a shift into the digital world, and now many of us consume our news right off our phones. The challenge here is that it is hard to determine what is real or fake, and we may read it, find it interesting and share it not questioning the authenticity of the source. This is how news gets sick.

The term “viral news” refers to stories that spread very quickly over the Internet (Lane, 2019). We spread them because they shock us, and sometimes match our viewpoints on politics, life, or personal matters.

NEWS UPDATE!

In 2017, Facebook data found that fake news stories about crime and politics was widely shared on the platform

The term “bots” has been thrown around lately and having an understanding of them will be helpful in understanding how viruses spread from social media platforms into our world. RoBOTS, are automated systems that can follow users, create posts, and share other platform users’ posts. Twitter for example noticed a rise in bot usage, so in 2018, they announced steps to limit the effect that bots can have on the platform, by reducing the ability to share stories and links across multiple accounts (Lane, 2019).  RoBOTS can be useful in spreading information that is needed in the community, but there are always those people who will want to take advantage, and they also contribute to the sickness of our news.

NEWS UPDATE!

In 1980 CNN was born, and with it came the 24-hour-news cycle. The 24-hour news cycle means that you have access to news 24 hours a day, and we are flooded with information all the time. News gets sick when these news sites begin to sensationalize news, which instead of telling the true story, look to increase drama to encourage consumption. We actually begin to become drawn to watching people shouting at each other, drawing attention to themselves, fighting in the streets, live shootings, death, disasters; and then we wonder why our days seem so depressing. Then what do we do, we share the information (virus) to our family and friends.

If you realize that you have acquired a news virus (fake news), don’t just share it, read or watch it, and decide on whether this is information that is worth passing on. Another angle you can take is looking at it like how you would if you wanted to limit your chance of picking up an STD. Your family doctor would tell you to limit your partners; same idea here, limit the amount of news sources that you intake to avoid picking up a virus and spreading it.

Going into 2020, we want our community to start taking responsibility for their Media Literacy Health and Safety, and it starts by thinking critically and asking yourself some questions.

Reference

Lane, Paul (2019). Viral News on Social Media. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group Inc.