How many times have you read something on your Instagram or Facebook feed thinking it was real news and instantly shared it with your friends and family?
If you’re active on these social platforms, you have most likely shared some fake news or seen some. Don’t feel too bad, that’s just what the statistics say.
According to Pew research, almost half of Americans get their news from one of the big three social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
The issue of fake news has become a matter of national security, thanks to the Russians making tens of thousands of fake news sites to pump out anti-Hillary Clinton rhetoric.
The subsequent hack of the DNC’s servers only complicated and muddled the disinformation even more, with real documents leaking damn near every day, which were focused on making Hillary Clinton look more like Mommy Dearest.
Everyone was so concerned with the with the rise of fake news, since the flood of false information had a major impact on Hillary Clinton’s perception with the general public, giving enough room to get Donald Trump into office.
Fake news is such a big deal that every that all of the big social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, said they were taking steps to clamp down on the practice.
For instance, Facebook just cleared out over 30,000 different accounts they identified as being “fake” just ahead of France’s upcoming election.
One of the main perpetrators of a good amount of fake news over the past few years was identified by security experts as a website called TMZHipHop.com.
According to stats, TMZHipHop.com hit fake news gold last year, when they produced one of the top three news fake news stories on Facebook in 2016.
The fake headline “Trump offering free one-way tickets to Africa & Mexico for those who wanna leave America” landed the website 802,000 shares, comments and reactions.
The problem of fake news is definitely blurring the line between satire, and outright fiction.
Fake news could impact the journalistic and artistic future of satire, which is executed with expertise by brands like The Final Edition, TheSpoof, and The Onion.
Two of the top editors of The Onion held talks with students at Northwestern University last week, to discuss the science of writing satire.
In fact, the main difference between satire and fake news is actually rooted in the truth.
Fake news is “plausible lies to reinforce biases people already have, while satire aims to challenge readers’ views by addressing an uncomfortable truth.” -The Onion editor Jen Jackson to students at Northwestern University.
Because of the volatile nature of the latest today’s political climate after the actions of the Russians, brands like The Onion have to be extra careful not to blur the line between fact and fiction.
To see a great example of satire in action, The Onion executed an article flawlessly can be seen on this article “There Are People In World Who Are Concerned About Current State Of Hip-Hop.”
The writers managed to tackle the touchy subject of hip-hop, using the hallmark tactics of humor, exaggeration, and ridicule to make an overarching comment on the east those of the genre.
[protected-iframe id=”97f9e08a2af2f10dedbbf8fb912bdcae-126268609-11457250″ info=”http://www.onionstudios.com/embed?id=1926″ width=”600″ height=”400″ scrolling=”no” webkitallowfullscreen=”” mozallowfullscreen=”” allowfullscreen=””]
