What's Disinformation?

Per the Merriam-Webster dictionary, disinformation is defined as being any false information deliberately and covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. This does not only have to be done by a government, although it has, but it can also be done by fake media outlets. Simply put, disinformation is, in its simplest form, "fake news". One of the worst things about this is once it is out there, it is incredibly hard to stop from spreading.

Dominik Stecula, a political science student at the University of British Columbia, conducted a study of his own to see how certain people react to disinformation and if they can spot "fake news" when it is presented to them. He surveyed about 700 undergraduate students from his university and showed them screenshots from certain news websites with headlines about the 2016 United States Presidential Election. With some fake news sites mixed in, the task was to prove which headlines and screenshots were real and which ones were fabricated. To say the least, the results he gathered were not what he was expecting. News sites that had no legitimacy were given that status by the students based upon the screenshots that they were seeing. As a result, the disinformation that they were reading about could have been spread rather quickly.  The sites looked legit and had a feel to them that was professional, but the material that was being written and read about was far from it. So, one of the many consequences of disinformation is that people do not know how to tell real news from fake news. This is what allows these fake media entities and websites to keep going and it will not stop until people dig a little deeper into what they are reading. As a matter of fact, 50% of all tweets from the 2016 Election had some fabrication to it. This is an incredibly high percentage, especially for such an important event.

Fake news can also impact our society as a whole. On the other side of the political spectrum, something that Americans are also oddly obsessed with is celebrities. We often times see on social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook that a celebrity has died, and one that comes to mind immediately is Morgan Freeman. He is an icon to many Americans simply due to his acting and the soothing sound of his voice. Of course, he has not passed away yet, but that does not stop people from trying to make a story out of nothing. People from all over the country unite to praise his life and send condolences to his family, only to find out that he is alive and well. This disinformation stems from a fake TMZ account that does not even have a check mark next to its Twitter handle, which is the symbol for being a verified account. Through retweets and likes, our society grieved at the loss of an American legend, who by the way is still living.