FAKE NEWS AND INTERNET TROLLING
According to Oxford dictionary, “News is newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent events usually a broadcast or published report not previously known to someone.” From the abbreviation of NEWS itself “Notable Events, Weather, and Sports.” To simply put news is a form of communication in providing people important information that happened that day or a day when a notable event happened. With this being said, a lot of news and information happening around the world, due to the number of events happening per day we can’t really know for sure if it is real or not due to the rise of fake news. Fake news has been happening before it has just evolved through the internet.
FAKING SOCIAL MEDIA
Fake News according to Cambridge dictionary, “false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke.” This is scary because news is an important source of information with the rise of fake news it will be hard to distinguish what news to follow or believe if it could be fake. An example of fake news is Actor and now Ormoc City Mayor Richard Gomez has also fallen prey to a piece of information he thought was legit. He shared a fake story from altervista blog, claims that Queen Elizabeth II has called President Rodrigo Duterte a “brave man.” As per memebuster.net, a website that tackles fake news in the Philippines, the blog even mentioned that the BBC Channel reported it, which was not true.
TROLLING THE NET
Trolling is defined as creating discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people by posting inflammatory or off-topic messages in an online community. Basically, a social media troll is someone who purposely says something controversial to get a rise out of other users.
Internal trolls are happening mostly in support of politicians, hired by them. one of Manila’s hundreds of troll farms stirring out fake content, false narratives, and anything else the client wants. Trolls aim to create fake social media accounts to make it appear as if the candidate had a vast and fervent base of supporters. Another goal was to smear any critics, especially those who call them out for precisely the jobs they do. Across the Philippines, it’s a virtual free-for-all. Trolls for companies. Trolls for celebrities. Trolls for liberal opposition politicians and the government. Trolls trolling trolls. “The presence of a large for-hire market looking at all the disinformation online that you can buy and people are selling is quite disturbing,” Camille Francois, the chief innovation officer of Graphika, a firm that helps tech companies and government investigators find and confront online disinformation, said at a Federal Election Commission symposium in September.
Overall, it is hard to believe everything you see on the internet these days cause of the emergence of fake news and internet trolls. Always be mindful of the information you read and remember to follow news stations and sources that are reliable. This is to stop spreading misinformation to other people and the spread of these fake news.
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