fake news essay 1

Fake News Essay By: Brennan Johnson

With the internet growing, the number of users and fake news being spread on various websites are growing along with it. This has lead to fake news stories’ creators getting into hot water with the people they are effecting. In the time that we live in today, this is happening regularly and will always be a con that we will have with the internet. All we can do is find ways to prevent it from happening, prevent ourselves from getting affected by it, and finding consequences we can give to those select few problematic stories that cause controversy in our society no matter what the purpose was. One way that we can prevent this from happening regularly, is to ban the account of the user that caused the controversial post that are untrue. This will prevent the creator from posting more fake news on that particular website. This was found on the citizen journalism packet we did in class where they punished the creator of the Steve Job’s death hoax by deleting their account of the website. Now someone arguing this idea will probably say that the person who got their account banned can just make another account and post more fake news, but if we ban the email address instead of the account it would prevent the person from making another account with that email address. Depending on how controversial the fake news was on the society, the consequences should vary. If something was a little bit of a problem, then the website should at least ban them for maybe a month or two. If the post was very controversial like the Steve Jobs post, then the website should ban them permanently. This is because if a not so controversial post goes viral, since it doesn’t affect the society that much, then why not just leave it up if it’s only a fake post just to be a fake post. If it is very controversial however, then, like I said before, the user’s email

should be banned from that internet, especially if that post hurt more than one person and started new rumors based off of the post. In the citizen journalism packet we did in class, they deleted the person’s account, but that person can just make another account, but if our society bans the email address of the creators of the fake news, than if would help prevent just a little bit more of fake news being on the internet. In conclusion, fake news is not something to mess around with. It can affect multiple people and have a great affect to their lives. Our society needs to have multiple consequences established to cover all of the various types of fake news stories. You should always look out for fake news on whatever source you are on, and try to prevent the spread of these fake news stories.

Sources: Leibowitz, Michelle. “The Power of Citizen Journalism Demonstrates the Need for Standards.”