We’ve been discussing privacy quite a bit and I think we should now focus our attention on how to determine what is true and what is false. Unfortunately we don’t live in a black and white world and some truths we know or thought we knew really aren’t the truth at all. For example, I went to elementary school in the 80’s and in history class, we were taught Christopher Columbus discovered America, which honestly never made sense because why didn’t he start a colony there? and what about Jamestown and Plymouth Rock? and well to put it short, we just went with it because that is what was written in our history books. Now we know this to not be true, that he actually landed farther south than the US.
Now, there are so many sources to get information from. We have so many news channels both on tv and online, newspapers, websites, books, magazines, museums, and of course social media. According to the Pew Research Center, 62% of adults in the United States get news from social media., as well as three-fourths who say they get news from e-mail or social media sites updates, according to a report published by CNN.
But how do we know what we are reading is true? I have been reading the New York Times and Washington Post since high school, but when i speak to some people, they brush it off as “fake news”. Which leads me to ask, how do we determine what is accurate? is it accurate because it is something we believe in or have had a similar experience? Is it “fake news” because it does not align with our beliefs/experiences? Is it accurate because our friends/family believe the same thing?
Part 1 (5points): Social media in particular, has done some things to help combat the spread of fake news, but do you think it is enough? You can review Facebook’s Fact Check information here: https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/third-party-fact-checking/how-it-works (Links to an external site.) Do you think they should do more? Who should be responsible for fact checking social media, the news, other sources?
Part 2: (5 points) What regulations do you think companies like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube should incorporate to block the spread of misinformation? Or if you think they are already doing enough, why? For example, should political memes on facebook be fact checked before they are posted? Should posts be limited by region? Should there be restrictions on reposting posts or meme’s etc?
Part 3 (5 points): Find a meme, tweet, post, that is true, and find the opposite that is false. Then fact check it and include the sources you used to fact check.
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