Reposting is a major vehicle for the spread of fake news. It is clear that platforms such as, Instagram, twitter, and facebook, are not certified news sources. Yet, when we are browsing through these sites and see an intriguing or appalling headline, we often times perceive it as fact. If it is particularly alarming, we repost the information to our followers with good intentions, but without ever verifying its validity.
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The photo on the left displays a tweet published by a "North Carolina for Trump" page, reposting an inaccurate article written by "endingthefeed.com". This article was completely fabricated and without doing proper investigation it was reposted and retweeted over a million times on the platform. This may not seem like a large issue however when looked at objectively, this was responsible for over a million voters getting incorrect information during a vital time of American politics.
The photo on the left is a facebook post which states that Wikileaks confirmed Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS. This is a particularly famous example of fake news. Though this fake news story did not originate on facebook, it certainly assisted in the spread of it.
The photo on the left is a well-intentioned tweet by Logan Paul who was attempting to spread awareness to his followers about the amazon wildfires just a few months ago in 2019. However, this is not a photo of the amazon fires of 2019, it is a photo posted by the Guardian in 2007 when they covered a separate instance of fires in the amazon. This photo was circulated so many times on twitter that this became the communal visual understanding of the events in the amazon. This is particularly problematic because the photo was reposted by celebrities with massive social media followings like Leonardo Dicaprio and Jake Paul
The picture below depicts a headline from a New York Times article which states that "Russian Influence Reached 126 Million Through Facebook Alone". Though this isn't a direct example of a fake news story spreading through social media, we truly have no idea the sheer amounts of fake news influenced by Russia we may have been reposting. This is truly frightening due to the fact that we cannot comprehend the scale of damage this has done because we know so little about it.
