Clickbait. Fake news. Lies designed to attract attention.

Fake news reports have soarn on social media. It remains the top industry concern in 2017. We have got to a point where people can not recognise what is real and what is fake.

How big is the problem of fake news?

A study found that 53% of people are seeing fake news online once per day or more, and 79% of people have, at least once, started to read a story before realizing that it was fake news. For example, a fake news report that democratic senators wanted to impose sharia law in Florida was repeated by Michael Flynn, trumps nominee for national security advisor. These stories compel us to click on them. They are extremely popular over social media. They get retweeted, liked and spread like disease and people don’t even realise they are doing it. They don’t realise that these articles are fake.

Fake articles usually contain an element of truth to try and hide the false qualities they obtain. The problem with fake news is that people do not look into the source of the information however they retweet it regardless. You must be thinking, surely you can tell Fake news from real news? Actually, no. We are blinded and ignorant by the fact that we can’t tell what is true and what is False. A recent Study found that more than 7,800 responses from middle school, high school and college students were unable to assess information from sources. It is not that the readers are stupid, it’s the problem that news format is easy to imitate.

Fake news is made up and manipulated to resemble credible journalism and its main aim is to attract maximum attention.

So how can you tell fake news from real news? You can look into the source of the news and try to find evidence of truth. But how can you prevent the spread of fake news? You can flag any article you have looked into and know is not completely truthful or you can report offensive articles. Facebook has now said that it has updated its software to prevent hoax news from appearing in its “trending topics” section. Guides for helping users to stop fake news were trailed to help people detect untruthful posts.

We are slowly doing things to try and stop the communication of fake news; however, by individuals taking action, less false information can be used in a destructive or manipulative way. Help stop fake news today. Think about what you read.