In this Information age, It is easy and fast to pass the information. Back then, we used to wait for weeks to get that appointment letter from the renowned university. Now with the help of E-mails, it’s just a matter of seconds. We don’t need to wait for tomorrow’s newspaper to read about today’s election result. Writing letters has been replaced with Whatsapp chats. Everything is available at our fingertips.
By the fact of a two-edged sword, this fast-growing network has given us so many problems. One amongst is the spread of Fake news. As per Wikipedia, Fake news is untrue information presented as news. It often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity or making money through advertising revenue. Fake news need not be completely untrue. Some people modify the actual event a little bit and give a different perception to the viewer. We often see so many such case studies in social media. Information shapes our perception of the world. The impact of the fake news ranges from small behavioural changes of a person to the big rage between the people.
Sticking to the title of this article, let’s jump into the ways of reducing the spread of the fake news.
Search before sharing:
One of the effective ways of dealing with fake news is extra googling. Most of the times, we share the part of an article as a screenshot. After a couple of forwards, no one knows the author of it and their intentions. The same case with the memes, they take a portion of an article/news and present it a funnier manner. Before sharing that so-called hilarious meme, informative article, let’s do that extra google to verify the correctness of the content.
Avoid the Anchoring bias:
Anchoring is a cognitive bias where an individual depends too heavily on an initial piece of information offered to make subsequent judgments during decision making. So while we are doing the extra googling, we often search for the data to justify a piece of initial information. Instead, we should search in the authentic resources. For example, if you see a meme about the government’s new bill and want to verify the correctness of it, don’t search for other articles on google. There may be multiple articles supporting that fake news. If you happened to check those articles, then you’ll believe that fake news as the true one and forward it. Instead, Directly go to the Parliament/Assembly portal for the information on the passed bills.
Terms and Conditions thought process:
Let’s take the example of the recent Kurkure’s/Lay’s advertisement.
In this picture, we can see that the 2GB Free Data with the 20Rs Kurkure/Lay’s packet. But there is a small star mark on the Free denoting the terms and conditions. If we read the terms and conditions, we can know that we will get up to 2GB data and not the entire 2GB data.
Similarly, some people highlight the part of the news to give a different perception. So better read it thoroughly before reacting.
Image editing creativity:
With the increasing technology, we can easily edit the screenshot of any tweet/post/chat/item-review. So if you come across such screenshot in the meme, go to the corresponding profile/website and check whether it is a piece of original information or someone has edited that one.
Wow, I’m going to be the Prime Minister.
Follow the person you disagree with:
A considerable amount of fake news is a result of trolling the person/celebrity that you don’t like. Disagreeing the person is a personal choice. If you follow that person also in social media, you will know the perspectives of both sides also it will aid your better judgement. Hence reducing the possibility of passing the troll/fake news about another person.
Even if we follow all these, still there is a chance of spreading the fake news. So be careful while sharing anything, especially the sensitive information. Don’t share any such thing in large groups. Limit it to the small groups/personal chats with the same/higher level of accountable people.
P.S: You can share this article with your friends without extra-googling.