Today in English we talked about misinformation and fake news. Fake news spreads much faster than real news, and this is quite scary to think about. To me, I don’t find fake news to be a huge issue, it affects the world if one person’s opinion get’s spread everywhere, but for me personally, I live in a country where it doesn’t happen much. In Singapore, we rarely have fake news as it is illegal, and even if I see a false piece of information online, I can check my sources and find out if it’s true or not. In places like the US, fake news can be a cause of violence, and it has become quite a huge issue since social media has become more popular. For example, people who are anti-vac are usually people who have been misinformed or don’t have all the information. Misinformation happens quite easily, even if you mishear or misunderstand someone, you can spread information that isn’t quite the truth, and it can make you think things like vaccinations cause more harm than good.
Fake news on social media is very similar to rumours in real life. When rumours get spread, it’s very hard to reverse them or convince people that they aren’t true, even if they are about you. Sometimes people also don’t believe things they ‘don’t want to hear’. By this I mean they will thing that it is false if it doesn’t make sense to them, and they don’t check to see whether it is actually true or not (and vice versa).