A Samsung Tab S and Pixel 3XL screen showing Coronavirus information

Isabelle Shaw

Content warning: This article contains mention of sexual assault and abuse.

While fake news might seem harmless, it can have detrimental effects when spread across the internet — impacting everything from politics to celebrity culture to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Should we regulate the spread of misinformation on social media? Is it even possible?

How fake news impacted the COVID-19 pandemic

When lockdown began in 2020, the gravity of harm from COVID-19 was finally realised by many people. Inevitably, there was widespread fear, especially among those most vulnerable to the disease.

Unfortunately, this fear of the unknown became a gold mine for internet misinformation, as social media conspiracists preyed on the lack of knowledge surrounding COVID-19 to promote their own agendas. Anti-vaxxers proliferated fake statistics and stories across social media about the ‘dangers’ of vaccinations. This led to concern from politicians that the spread of misinformation would curb government efforts to lower the number of cases.

“The misguided advice spread across social media quicker and more extensively than through traditional news channels.”

Celebrities with young, influential audiences posed a great risk. Nicki Minaj, who claimed her cousin’s friend’s testicles were made swollen by the coronavirus vaccine, is one famous example. This piqued many experts’ concerns about the power of online untruths to shape public opinion.

Soon enough, headlines were flooded with Donald Trump’s suggestion that ‘injecting’ disinfectant might combat COVID-19. The misguided advice spread across social media quicker and more extensively than through traditional news channels. This resulted in a broader dissemination of the questionable guidance than had been witnessed before — many people took the fake headlines as scientific truth and caused injury to themselves.

Image courtesy of Brett Sayles on Pexels. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.

The political influence of fake news

The internet can be an invaluable tool for fighting social injustice and calling for legislative change.

During the Arab Springs in 2011, mass-communication in Tunisia allowed people to unite in revolution. Thanks to the spread of grievances on social media, 1,200 people showed up to protests at Tahir Square, Egypt.

However, the spread of political misinformation with the intention of aligning support with the user’s political beliefs can be dangerous. There are few legal restrictions to limit sensationalist political news shared online.

Rumours and false figures, when spun out of proportion, have played a major role in the American political landscape. The most infamous example was during the 2016 Presidential Elections. In exchange for money, a group from Macedonia spread fake headlines about the Pope’s endorsement of Trump.

A fake news story that members of the Democratic party were operating a paedophile ring in a pizza restaurant both damaged the reputation of senior leaders in the party and led a man to open fire in the location. The incident serves as a cautionary tale that misinformation is not just ideologically dangerous, but can lead to physical violence.

Renee DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, similarly said the 2021 storming of Capitol Hill was the result of online movements operating in closed social media networks where people believed the claims of voter fraud and of the election being stolen from Donald Trump.

How celebrity rumours can affect a career

Popular culture gossip sites spread false information about celebrity relationships and other parts of their personal lives to attract attention on social media.

Taylor Swift admitted in her Miss Americana (2020) documentary that false reports of her pregnancy affected her body image extremely negatively. The rumours even contributed, in part, to the worsening of her eating disorder.

In the era of cancel culture, misinformation can be detrimental to a celebrity’s reputation, with one false rumour risking irreparable damage to their career.

A doctored video by Kim Kardashian led to the spread of tweets wrongly suggesting Swift was a liar, resulting in her being ‘cancelled’. This fake news forced her to take a break from music for a year.

 

Combatting fake news

Internet algorithms play an important role when it comes to regulations.

Algorithms are used to help promote content from small channels to the everyday user on social media. While this allows people to see content that would otherwise be drowned out by ‘big names’, this also includes mistruths distributed by news outlets that spread fake news. The phenomenon known as incidental exposure occurs when these mistruths are then shared and reproduced by bigger social media accounts — leading to widespread fake news like ‘PizzaGate’.

“The majority of people who are influenced by misinformation are unlikely to take measures to protect against it”

Unfortunately, efforts to prevent disinformation are not clear-cut, and even high-credibility sources can be unreliable.

The Lancet, the world’s highest-impact academic journal, infamously distributed the fraudulent research paper claiming a correlation between autism and the MMR vaccine. Technically ‘correct’ news can still be used to fearmonger, such as headlines claiming that Diet Coke is carcinogenic — when you drink 14 cans a day. And, while Facebook is programmed to inform users of links to misinformation, there is still a deluge of hoaxes being shared on an almost weekly basis.

This is without mentioning X/Twitter’s new identity verification system, offering check marks to anyone who paid for one, making it almost impossible to spot legitimate sources of information.

Whose responsibility is misinformation regulation?

There have been legislative calls to better regulate the spread of fake news on social media, especially regarding science, politics, and health issues.

However, others argue that individuals should take this responsibility themselves and look beyond attention-grabbing headlines for the truth. For this reason, platforms like Twitter ask users to read articles before sharing them and allows for the addition of ‘contextual notes’ to warn others about Tweets containing false information. But other platforms, particularly TikTok, don’t share fact-checks with users.

Fake news can potentially be curbed by using apps to spot it. Apps, such as Fakey, can detect high and low-credibility sources, deterring people from spreading fake headlines. While this can be beneficial to people who actively avoid fake news, the majority of people who are influenced by misinformation are unlikely to take measures to protect against it.

There is no easy solution to fighting fake news. But, without viable solutions, the future of the internet looks darker than ever before.

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Featured image courtesy of Obi – @pixel7propix via Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license can be found here.

Isabelle is a student at the University of Edinburgh studying History and Spanish. She is an aspiring journalist with a focus on writing articles that help contribute to change and understanding of women's rights.

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