Research Paper Sample on Social Media - Facts or Bended Stories

Introduction

Social media allows convenient access to the latest and breaking news as it is happening around the world but are news outlets presenting all the facts or do they bend the stories and twist the facts. In recent years, Use of social media has increased in developing and emerging nations. Large numbers of social media users in many countries find the information from these platforms to be educative, up to date and geared towards matters significant to them than then the new they obtain from other sources. The vast majority of social media users in several countries say additionally reveal that they frequently set eyes on editorials and other contents that acquaint them with new ideas. On the other hand, there are different opinions about the bias, hateful nature, and reliability of social media content as compared to other sources. When questioned about the nature of the materials they come across on these sites, pluralities in many countries reported at least frequently seeing content that seems untrue or that make them have negative feelings about groups dissimilar from them. Social media allows convenient access to the latest and breaking news that is happening around the world but are news outlets presenting all the facts or do they bend the stories and twist the facts to sway the opinion of the public in one way or the other.

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Current Media Platforms

For the people who use the internet daily, social media has become an essential platform. Every single day people spend roughly 4 hours scrolling through the contents of social media (Teoh, 2018). As posited by Teoh (2018), through social media, individuals are in a position to find suitable content. Additionally, social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook can find one's preferences by using browser history and do a recommendation. As a result, content is fed to social media users.

Every single day loads of content flood the news feed from day-to-day updates to information distributed by people in social contacts. As a consequence, we become ignorant in several ways with all the information flowing through. The outcome is generally a result of the ignorance and information gap of a large number of Facebook users. According to Teoh (2018), humans are so dependent on all the information that emanate from social media feeds and believe pretty much everything shared on social media without checking its authenticity. Social media platform out to be a place to extend our social networking, over the years, it has become a platform where individuals share updates and information. However, with large quantities of content sharing, people have become satisfied with the content that is shared by believing that all the information shared on Facebook is authentic.

Crowdsourcing

The extensive persistence and prevalence of misinformation in present-day societies, for instance, the misconception that there is a connection between autism and childhood vaccinations, is an issue of public interest. Misinformation can stem from rumors, politicians, vested interests, and works of fiction. Furthermore, Lewandowsky et al. (2012) posit that adjustments in the media landscape such as the emergence of the internet have substantially influenced the methods with which misinformation is distributed and information is communicated People get news from social media. For this reason, it is suitable to decrease exposure to poor quality news content. One suitable mediation id for social media ranking algorithms to display comparatively less content from sources deemed untrustworthy by social media users. But are laymen verdicts tangible evidence of excellence, or are they contaminated by lack of information, partisan or bias? Maybe surprisingly, laymen are pretty good at differentiating between higher and lower quality sources of information. The outcomes point out that integrating the trust rankings of laymen on social media rating algorithms might prove an efficient response against news content with severe political partisanship, fake news, and misinformation.Fake News and Fact-Checking

The development of social media as a principal source of new content has established a fresh environment for the distribution of misinformation. This is portrayed by the recent escalation of an old kind of misinformation. According to Pennycook & Rand (2019), purported "fake news" has become more prominent as a fundamental issue in the course of the 2016 United States presidential election and has continuously drawn much attention. As it is currently being addressed, fake news largely spreads through social media sites particularly Facebook. As a consequence, realizing what can be achieved to prevent the over-reliance and sharing of misleading stories online is a question of great significance.

“Fake” News or Real News

The greatest challenge is minimizing the prevalence of misinformation, specifically on social media. Knowing false news involves the utilization of a different approach that picks up on the great literature on the “wisdom of crowds” and crowdsourcing through crowdsourcing to evaluate the authenticity of new websites, as opposed to individual stories, and then fine-tuning social media platform ranking algorithm in a manner that users have a better chance to observe content from reputable media outlets (Pennycook & Rand, 2019; (Golub & Jackson, 2010). This technique is attractive since ranking at the website level, in place of concentration on personal stories, does not need rankings to take into account the presentation of dishonest headlines; and since using laymen instead of specialists enables large amounts of rankings to be regularly and effortlessly obtained. Moreover, this tactic is not restricted to absolute false allegations but can also identify websites that create whatever type of biased or misleading content.

Fact Check

A normal approach to take into consideration is the utilization of skilled fact-checkers to establish false content, and then taking part in some fusion of giving corrections, instantly censoring fake news, and tagging fake news with cautions (Pennycook & Rand, 2019). Rectifying misinformation and substituting it with credible information can reduce the constant impact of misinformation, and specific warnings later decrease inaccurate information. Nevertheless, since fact-checking naturally requires more time and effort than producing fake news, many fake stories never get tagged (Pennycook & Rand, 2019). Besides just decreasing the effectiveness of the intervention, inefficiency to tag numerous fake news may enhance the reliance in the untagged stories since the insufficiency of warning may be considered to indicate that the news has been confirmed. Moreover, skilled fact-checking determines conspicuously fake news, as opposed to misleading coverage of incidents that did take place.

“Fake” News

In the progressively connected society, the information could disperse from one side of the planet to the other, through the internet. The significance of unbiased and accurate information could not be overemphasized. The discovery of the fake news has drawn the attention of many organizations and governments around the world. In review, this is not surprising. Not only has social media platforms made it very simple but has overburdened the human instinct for auto segregation. This trend is referred to as selective exposure, where people would rather have consumed entertainment or news that strengthens what they already have confidence in (Waldrop, 2017). Selective exposure is embedded in a properly understood psychological event. Kahan (2017) argued that the predisposition to only believe in the proof that reaffirms our present opinions and to overlook any other thing that is not appropriate

Sometimes, deliberate disruptions result in the ultimate and possibly most significant part of the strategy. This in turn helps individuals become very knowledgeable media consumers and therefore reduces the need for questionable. Menczer argues that “the social media platforms could assist by establishing some frictions in the platforms making it difficult to share. Also, social media platforms could again hinder from sharing an editorial after they had gone through it”

Popular Opinion

Popular opinion is greatly influenced by social media. A social media platform is not encouraging and is non-beneficial to young people. Zevallos (2011) posits that individuals need to be educated to be engaged critically with the planet they reside in, this necessarily implies learning about various strategies, communication mediums, and social media. An evaluative analysis of sharing information on social media platforms is a significant scientific effort.

Social media cause laziness. Quoting the words of De Bono, “We just feel we’ll just get more information and we don’t need to have ideas ourselves – we’ll get ideas from someone else, we don’t need to look at the data we’ll just see what someone else has said and so on” (Zevallos (2011). Also, social media is about sociology, not technology. Among these is the perception that sociology offers concerning social and generational network effects on the acceptance of social media. Sociologists can guide the policy and critique of social media, research, as well as education to improve how older and younger people intercommunicate with fresh technologies. On the contrary, the argument that social media make ‘stupid’ and ‘lazy’ is a poorly- informed dispute, specifically by an intellectual with no knowledge of technology.

Conclusion

Social media may be an essential media platform, but society should be more determined to hold the media accountable for reporting the truth and not bending stories to “popular” opinion. The information received from social media can both validate the activities of the powerful, and expedite transformation collectively. However, social media can also restrain and influence the characters of persons that are integral to social change in a broader manner

References

Golub, B., & Jackson, M. O. (2010). Naïve Learning in Social Networks and the Wisdom of Crowds. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2(1), 112–149.
https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.2.1.112

Kahan, D. M. (2017). Misconceptions, Misinformation, and the Logic of Identity-Protective Cognition. SSRN Electronic Journal, 164(605).
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2973067

Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and Its Correction.