Before we proceed to the main article, here are some fact-checked manufactured news that has been published in the Philippines that tackle Politics, Entertainment, Academe, and Health.
Politics
Entertainment
Academe
Health
Salabat a Cure for COVID-19
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The How's, The Who's, The Why's, The What's of
Manufactured News.
I will be conveying some of my FAQs when I ponder on why people make and spread manufactured news. And I will be answering it based only on my understanding from observing how fake news works. This is solely my opinion.
Who is their target market?
Based on what I perceived in reading and searching for fake news. Most of the people who engaged in such posts on different platforms are people who we can be classified as active, aged people, and diehard aficionado.
Active people simply means people who are constantly posting random stuff with an averaging of seven posts per day, people who are on the platform ten hours a day. These people do not care about the context, they are after the engagement they get in reposting such an eye-catching post.
Aged people because most of them have a fragile emotion and we can stereotype them as a tot when it comes to technologies since what-you-see-is-what-you-get.
Diehard aficionadi, another name for the category is the keyboard warriors. Just by the name itself, it explains that diehard is the epitome of being a keyboard warrior. We all know how diehard enthusiasts react, they are earmarked to their idols. If they read something favorable about their idols, they will not bother to fact-check the data. They are self-service biases who acknowledge ambiguous information as flattering, accepting positive feedback, rejecting negative feedback.
Why are they spreading such?
There are many explanations for that question. But based on what I contemplated is that, it is primarily because they are bored and just want to spread positivity. They just want to be on a lighter standpoint on everything. They are very optimistic not knowing that they are establishing a falsified world. The other point was because of money. By dissipating eye-catching manufactured news, people click and will divert to their site to get traffic because every traffic might be equivalent to a penny due to advertisements, promotions, and such. Lastly, they are being biased and becoming diehard devotees, which I already described the characteristics of one from the prior question.
What are we doing to at least know the truth?
To date news media sites are doing the fact-checking for you and some stand-alone organizations are fighting to prevent the spread. Just use the #factcheck to see the fact-checked news and you can also support by sending the falsified information to them.
How can we stop them as a private individual?
Just calm yourself from disseminating and reposting, if you have not verified the authenticity of a photo, article, or a bare post.
How to check authenticity?
Bare post:
Check the credibility of the author. You can just dive right into his profile to check if he is a poser or credible enough to disseminate such information. There is nothing wrong with judging the profile of others especially if it is for the good of many. And we do judge every single day it is part of our perception.
Shared photo:
The most viral phony news images are edited. They usually maintain most of the subject, including the signature of the reference photo, and tweak some phrases for them to put their scope. Most of the images that went viral are posts from newsmakers. If it is the circumstance you can double-check the plausible source of the photo on the official page of the newsmakers. Most of the official page has been verified by the platform provider. Those verified pages mostly than not have a blue checkmark after its name. If you can not find the photo on the verified page you can always use search engines like Google and check another platform in which they are present and look for the photo. If you can not find the plausible reference photo on their official pages go directly to their website and search for the topic. If it is not the case, and hardly a photo or screen-grabbed. Try looking for the source.
Shared article from a site:
If it is an article, open and read the article, most of the websites that contain fake news, they do not necessarily formulate or make an effort to write a full article. You will notice that the content of the article is barely a lenient edited picture, a title, and a little nothing content but sometimes with a maximum of fifty words. If you come across a site with lengthy content, look for their favicon. A favicon is placed at the distant left of the title bar. It is usually the logo of the organization. Take time to evaluate if their favicon is matched or related to their website. If you feel uncertain, it is time for you to look for the author, mainly you can find it in the upper line before the content of the article followed by the date and time it was published, some are at the end part of the article. Then begin to browse for the background of the author if it is present but if it is not specified you can always dig into google for the information regarding the website if that particular site has a reported history of malicious content, etc.
Note: Always be mindful of the date.
Also, Government Officials sometimes disseminate faulty news, news on what they perceived as Facts. How can you guarantee that they are telling us the truth? Google, because most of the time, what they are presenting is a public document. You can search it through search-engines, read the file to fact-check.
Conclusion:
Just be mindful of your imprint and engagement on the internet. You might not notice you have disseminated a piece of falsified news. Always check the credibility of bizarre information or post on the internet before sharing.
Supplementary Readings:
Facebook will now ‘fact-check’ photos, videos
4 kinds of fake news in PHL
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