Digital Citizenship

What is disinformation (Fake News)?

Disinformation (Fake news) is false information that is often spread (rumours) around. Disinformation is when people purposely mislead the information given to trick the media. This is often biased information like propaganda for example, created with the intent to harm people. Disinformation has false context, imposter content, Manipulated content, and fabricated content. Fabricated or deliberately manipulated is audio/visual content. This intentionally creates conspiracy theories or rumours. Disinformation is typically defined as “the deliberate creation and sharing of false and/or manipulated information that is intended to deceive mislead audiences, either for the purposes of causing harm, or for political, personal or financial gain”.

 

Debunking another you-tube of COVID-19 Disinformation - FIMA

 

How does disinformation impact a community?

Disinformation impacts a community by giving worries to people and false hope. It can cause people around this community to be worried and stressing out for no reason. We make important decisions based on information given and if disinformation were to get leaked and spread around, this can cause major setbacks to the community. Many lives would be changed because of this fake news and some may not have positive impacts. It causes fear to rise in people and they may overthink these situations. Disinformation can cause political problems to rise in the community. People might have different feelings with the information and that can cause things to lash out and go into wrong directions. Major acts like this can cause problems around the community.

 

Community clipart, Clip art, The neighbourhood

 

Give an example/share an experience of how disinformation impacted you or a community

An example of how disinformation impacted me is when I had an assignment given to me where it involved me going online and searching for information. I chose a website that was quite sketchy but at that time I didn’t suspect anything of it. I took information from that website and added it into my assignment. When my assignment was handed back to me, I got marks taken off because of incorrect information. Me trusting a website with false information caused me to lose marks off of it and it lowered my average grade.

Another example is when my friends and I heard about a new rumour going around saying someone had intent to harm people around Vancouver. This caused my friends and I to worry about where we could and couldn’t hangout. We were afraid of going to Vancouver because we didn’t want to risk anything. It scared us until we found out the information was false and was directed to somewhere else in the world. It was a sign of relief from us, but it still had us worried and cautious about what information’s we should trust.

 

Moving Beyond the Fold: Reporting the News in the Digital Age - Rock Content

 

How would you help your fellow classmates identify and stop the spread of disinformation?

I would tell them if the information they heard it from was 100% reliable and trustworthy. It should come from a trustful website or resource to ensure that it is right. To stop disinformation from spreading, I would always tell others to check where the information is coming from. Sometimes people often find themselves believing information from social media accounts with low followers. Social Media accounts like these are not trustworthy and reliable for true information. When wanting to know if it is real, try to rely on accounts that have more publicity and followers. You always need to identify what source you are getting the information from.

Tips that would help my fellow classmates identify and stop the spread of disinformation include:

  • Read Beyond: Headlines can be anything you want, and it sometimes may not even relate to the information given below. Check out the whole story.
  • Check the Author: Find information on the author, check if they are real or not. This can determine if the information given is from someone faking to be another person.
  • Supporting sources: Click on links that support the information, read through it, and find out if it matches with and supports the headlines.
  • Check the date: When seeing information flying around, check the story and see if the date is new or old. With checking the date, it can determine if it is fake or not because reposting old news stories doesn’t mean they’re relevant to current events.

 

Need authentic coronavirus updates? Follow these Twitter accounts - The Current

Audio Recording

What is disinformation (fake news)?

How does disinformation impact a community?

Give an example/share an experience of how disinformation impacted you or a community

How would you help your fellow classmates identify and stop the spread of disinformation?