Hoaxes and disinformation: Can you tell what is true and what is fiction?
Dana Kleinová
In the digital age, you can witness the rapid spread of information. Unfortunately, not all of this information is true. Fraudulent sites and profiles often spread not only confusion but also hate.
Especially during critical situations, various fake news may reach you, attempting to manipulate your emotions and evoke fear, panic, or distrust – whether it's distrust in healthcare, the state, or the media. They create a feeling in you that you don't know whom to trust and whom to turn to when the worst reaches your ears. However, you should not lose your cool. Today, we will explain how to combat such fake news and how to avoid being deceived in the future.
First, let's show you what types of fake news exist:
Fake news – information that deliberately mimics the format of journalism or other products of journalism, while its creators intentionally or unintentionally mislead their audience. These are constructed pieces of information that distort reality for their own benefit.
Disinformation – any form of false information aimed at deceiving, damaging reputation, or otherwise influencing a particular group of people or even an entire population. This can take the form of text, image, video, graphic, or sound.
Hoax – a virally spread alarmist message, which is a subset of disinformation. It may not be based on reality and spreads faster than you can imagine. Moreover, the more people share it, the more may fall for it.
Propaganda – information, idea, opinion, or visual material created for further distribution, usually presenting only one side of an argument, with the aim of influencing people's opinions and amplifying their views – particularly negative ones.
Conspiracy theories – theories that attempt to explain an event as a secret plot aimed against a certain group of people or even humanity as a whole. They often combine facts with speculation and seek to convince people that not everything is as it seems at first glance.
Deepfake – a technology based on artificial intelligence. It helps mimic well-known individuals by copying their appearance, and sometimes their voice, thus spreading false information. It can be used, for example, in deceptive advertising, where a fake celebrity promotes a product, even though this person has never heard of it in reality.
Now that you are familiar with what such fake information looks like, we will reveal how you can recognize it too. All you need to do is follow these five steps:
Check the source – Every piece of information has its source, which you should not have trouble finding. If you read an article or see a post on social media that you are unsure is true, the first thing you should do is find the source of the information. If the site or profile does not provide it, it is likely fiction and not fact.
Check if the information is up-to-date – While it may be true, the date of its publication could make it disinformation. For example, if a video appears in your timeline containing war footage, and the author claims it was filmed just now, it may not immediately be false information. This video could be, for instance, 10 years old and at that time the footage was true, but now it has been misused to incite panic.
Observe your emotional reaction – As we mentioned, fake news aims to evoke fear, anger, or distrust in you. If you read a message and your first reaction is something like “I will no longer live in this country!”, try to think about what intention the author had when writing this article or post and whether you just reacted the way they secretly hoped you would.
Do your own research – We live in a digital age, and verifying information has never been easier. If you come across information that you don't know whether it is true, simply enter key words from it into Google and try to find out what other sources say about it.
Don't be afraid to ask others for their opinions – If you evaluate that something is wrong, but you are not one hundred percent sure, don’t hesitate to discuss it. No one will ridicule you just because you decided to broaden your horizons. However, remember that it's better to talk about it with people you trust since various internet discussion forums can be the breeding grounds of disinformation.
Above all, don’t be afraid to use your own mind, or you might become a victim of one of the media-related phenomena.
The first of these is Gerbner’s cultivation theory. It discusses the effects of mass media on the individual and how their long-term influence can affect you. The more time you spend reading articles, watching the news, or flipping through magazines, the more you start to believe them. Perhaps sometimes even more than your own judgment. You simply accept their depiction of reality and forget about your own experiences and knowledge.
Similar is the Hypodermic needle theory by Lasswell. Its name actually reveals exactly what it is about. Simply put, a person gets injected with everything they hear in the media and automatically believes that the media is telling them the truth. This theory speaks of the omnipotence of the media and that they evoke immediate effects. Fortunately, today we can verify information and it comes from various sources, so it is unlikely that something like that could happen to you.
The third phenomenon is The spiral of silence theory by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. It explains just how important it is to have your own opinion and not let your surroundings suppress you into believing that you are certainly wrong. In this theory, people fear expressing their own opinions and prefer to join the majority. Here we could easily include “peer pressure,” where especially teenagers are prone to do and say what their peers do. You simply don’t want to be the one breaking the group and thus you would rather pretend to be a fool who lacks their own opinion.
Lastly, we have the Bandwagon effect, which is also known as the Herd effect and is credited to Paul Félix Lazarsfeld. Its name arose from the idea that “everyone wants to ride the bandwagon.” The bandwagon is, in this case, someone popular, known, or influential, and people often take them as a role model. In the case of youth, we could include influencers here. Influencers claim that something is cool, that you need to have something, and you believe them, even though you have no idea whether they were paid for it or if they mean it seriously. You simply follow trends more than your own judgment.
We believe that our tips have helped you, and the next time you see something that doesn’t smell right, you will keep a cool head and verify the correctness of the information like a pro. And if you are still unsure about the truth of any information, you can always verify it on the website konspiratori.sk or on the profile Hoaxes and Scams – Police of the Slovak Republic, which you can find on Facebook.
Sources:
https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon%C5%A1pira%C4%8Dn%C3%A1_te%C3%B3ria
https://www.techbox.sk/co-je-to-deepfake-a-preco-predstavuje-nebezpecenstvo
https://managementmania.com/sk/kultivacna-teoria-cultivation-theory
https://rpm.fss.muni.cz/Revue/Heslar/lasswell.htm