Who is to Blame for Fake News

Rubin from the University of Western Ontario has categorized fake news into five types which are; stories that ensure that the truth is contentious, stories that are intentionally deceptive, large-scale hoaxes, distorting some information while reporting real facts, and the same time making jokes at face value. Currently, journalism is faced with a number of threats and fake news is one of them. The threat is bigger than the steady and the majority of advertising agency and free sites on the internet. Fake news has a huge impact on the career of journalists since they undermine their trust and we all know that without trust journalists do not exist since they have nothing to deliver to the public To provide a strong foundation that people can use to identify fake news, critically literacy skills are needed.

These skills are also required to be able to navigate the current digital age. The Internet is considered as the growing mode of spreading the fake news in this 21st century. Social media (Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms) has lost its sore role in the society. It is no longer connecting people and their societies as it was meant to be; instead it is a platform where people are using to spread fake news. Facebook is supposed to shape the society but currently, it is not doing so. Facebook and Twitter are among the mainstream media where propaganda campaigns get carried out by many people with fake profiles, automated bots, and influencers among others. To confirm whether the news we read and share our original, we should confirm the source.

There are many dubious sources that have been created resembling the original ones and for this reason, we should be careful. How about reading the articles and the links we receive before sharing it helps a lot. Politicians, public officials, and police officers, see journalists as propaganda pawns that can be used to spread their agendas to the public. With the different ways of how people see journalists' people tend to doubt the news they receive from these journalists. The right to privacy is becoming the most pressing issue. The current tech world we are living in today is causing all these where it enhances the unleashing of the darker side that exists within our world. With all these, journalists get the chance to spread this news to the public and this tarnishes the media sector.

Journalists use the fake news as a tool to sway public opinion. Many people get manipulated and by doing so they are able to target specific people and spread the specific message, lie, and even propaganda. Nearly everyone is responsible for spreading fake news and I understand that many people will ask how. Currently, the internet is no longer new since nearly everybody is able to afford and use the internet in one way or another. Almost everything we conduct in our daily life, there is the use of internet, smartphones, and laptops. This means that we produce data day in day out spread through the number of posts we like and click on our social platforms to the method of transport we use.

With the way we use the internet, it becomes easy for people to collate and mine our information and create profiles. People should know that these journalists survive from journalism. On the other hand, it is the role of a journalist to strive and make sure that they gain the trust of their end receivers. They should make sure that news is trustworthy and ever news and not fake news keeping in mind that it gaining the trust once broken it becomes hard. We are giving the fake news creator the platform to do so since we are readily available to receive the news and to even share it. The communication scholars refer to it as cognitive dissonance which is the experience that we get when we receive information and news if they contradict with ours.