Fake News!

I went to a guest speaker event given by Dr. Brian Southwell about the spreading of misinformation. His presentation was titled “Misinformation as a Challenge for Media Scholars, Pundits, and Policymakers." Throughout this presentation, Dr. Southwell discussed the numerous challenges associated with "fake news."

Dr. Southwell began the presentation with an interesting opening slide titled: HPU to move entire campus to Durham, NC, in Spring 2019. As High Point University students, we all knew this simply could not be true. However, Dr. Southwell argued that we would, even for a split second, consider the validity of the headline.

Dr. Southwell went on to explain the numerous reasons as to why misinformation is problematic. One of these reasons includes the fact that we are biased towards acceptance. He backed this up by reiterating Spinoza's beliefs. Spinoza believed that we accept information at face value, then tag is as true or false, which ultimately leaves a door open for vulnerability. Additionally, he discussed the reasons why people share misinformation. He explained that one of the reasons include that humans desire social bonding, which can actually outweigh the need for accuracy. Another reason was malice, although there are in fact some possibilities short of malice.

Another issue that Dr. Southwell addressed was why rumors spread. He explained that discomfort of uncertainty, lack of corrective information, and emotions may play a large component of that. An example of emotions causing rumors to spread is anger. You tend to see this malicious and opinionated behavior come out often in politics. He concluded this presentation with the concept that direct rebuttal and large scale exposure is needed to solve the problem of misinformation. Finally, Dr. Southwell mentioned the Rita Allen Foundation’s solutions forum that addresses misinformation sharing. The purpose of this forum is to come up with next generation ideas, new technologies to reduce the spread of fake news.