False News hardly Fade Away

The deliberate spread of false information with the intention of harming someone's reputation, making people think otherwise about what is true, motivating the public to rebel against the government, and, most distressingly, wreaking havoc in society is referred to as fake news.

Fake news is not a new phenomenon in the world. It has been there even before social media came to be. With the existence of man came fake news. Many people engage in it for a variety of reasons, which can be divided into two categories. The first is disinformation, which is false information that is purposefully created and spread in order to influence public opinion on a subject or to conceal the truth.

The second type of misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is created or spread by mistake or unconsciously.

In my country, people who spread disinformation are popularly referred to as “radio without battery”. Even though social media has expanded the operation of the ‘radio without battery’ through its more extensive reach, speed, and low costs, word of mouth continues to be a fundamental way in which falsehoods are spread in the country, particularly in rural areas. During the time when the first cases of Ebola virus was reported, series of false news about how to prevent the the virus surfaced and spread throughout the country. The false news started in the rural areas was that the only way to avoid being infected with Ebola was by pouring 50cl salt in one or two cups of water and drinking it. This fake news spread like wildfire and soon entered social media. Many families were reported to have lost their lives after consuming this mixture. It was after lots of deaths were reported that people began to debunk this fake news.

Fake news when spread are hard to erase. The existence of social media has helped to increase the damaging effects. Just a phone call or even a tweet and a recently generated fake news will be spread throughout the world. Other news aimed at suppressing the fake news will usually have little or no effect. Can you imagine that up till today, the fake news about immunization that was generated way before I was born has not yet been erased. When I was still in elementary school, immunization workers would always come to schools to immunize us but we make sure to run away from them because our parents had told us that immunization causes a strange sickness without cure. Even now that I am an adults, I still see lots of parents that refuse to immunize their children because they still hold on to such false news.

Sometimes I think that the reason why fake news are more believable is because the spreaders are so crafty that they make sure to give you instances that are hard to disprove if you are uninformed.

Fake news has done more harm and no good to the society. Imagine the panic the Americans were put into when on 10 August 1919 the Washington Herald ran the headline: ‘Planets Moving Into Huge Danger Zone; Earth Will Stagger From Mighty Shock’. Explosion of flaming gases leaping hundreds of thousands of miles out into space was predicted as well as lightening, hurricanes and great earthquakes that would take place for four days. People who read that paper were thrown in distress. That is what fake news can do. It can make people commit suicide just to evade the destruction predicted on them. How would you feel being the reason for chaos and deaths just because you couldn't keep your mouth shut.

Some people engage in spreading fake news because they want people to pay them attention but there are better ways to get that attention. Do something industrious and the attention would be all yours.

Do not be a 'radio without battery'. Do not be know as a spreader of fake news, else you will turn untrustworthy in any society you find yourself.