What Real People Can Do to Fight Back Against Fake News | Alternet
Fake news is a much bigger problem than it appears to be
Fake news is
a big deal. Recent research suggests that the proliferation of
conspiracy theories and other urban legends, vaguely disguised as real
news and disseminated widely on social media, played a significant role
in helping elect Donald Trump as president.
Fake news stories are just the shiny new variation of a very old phenomenon. Before we had that term, such stories were widespread email forwards, of the sort tracked at My Right Wing Dad and Snopes.
Before that, false stories were transmitted through newsletters or
plain old word-of-mouth. To be clear, liberals and leftists do this, too
— as anyone cornered by an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist can tell
you — but the problem, at least in recent years, is much worse on the
right.
