(MSW 513) Module 3 (DISCUSSION) Impact of Social Media on Social Issues

Module 3 Impact of Social Media on Social Issues

Locate a social media post about a controversial social issue and discuss why you believe the posts are fake news examples.

Fighting Back Against Fake News

Ideally, it would be great if Congress could pass laws that could regulate the proliferation of fake news. However, because it benefits the politicians themselves, when it comes to bipartisan issues, such policy will be a long-time company. Therefore, it is left up to individuals, special interest groups, and the social media platforms to combat the propagation of fake news.

According to Walters (2018) two major problems with exist related to fake news: (a) the lack of a consistent definition for "fake news" and (b) the absence of a workable standard to reliably identify fake news (p 158). Platforms like Facebook and Google have been accused as the source and purveyors of fake news. However, because of policy such as the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, these platforms cannot be held legally liable for what individuals post on the sites (Walters, 2018). These platforms have argued in the past, and the government has agreed that they cannot impose the first amendment freedom of speech. Unless it is deemed child pornography or human trafficking, under these legal stipulations misinformation and disinformation campaigns can thrive unchecked and unregulated.

These platforms were happy to continue its existence under these policies, until Russia's interference in the 207 elections where these platforms were used as the weapons of tools to impact the election. According to Walters (2018), "Twitter recently informed almost 700,000 users that they interacted with Russia-linked trolls. Twitter executives reported to Congress that the company had identified 36,000 Russia-linked bot accounts that produced roughly 1.4 million election-related tweets between September and November 2016." (p.152). Specifically, trolls and bots targeted individuals with personal and private information legally obtained through these social media platforms. Today Facebook and google are taking significant steps to protect the information of its users. Facebook, who has also taken the most criticism for its unwitting compliance with Russia's cyber warfare on America, has launched several initiatives to combat fake news.

The social media platforms have invested in several initiatives, including literacy campaigns of how to identify fake news. They have also invested in coders to build new algorithms to detect bogus accounts and the suspicious proliferation of disinformation campaigns. These platforms have also invested in heavily in human researchers brought in to detect content that algorithms and artificial intelligence cannot. While the platforms are still hesitant to impose on the first amendment and therefore hesitant to delete accounts or content, they are openly labeling content as suspicious. When possible if the information satisfies the platform's definition of egregious the bogus accounts and sites are shut down quickly.