Fake News, Misinformation, and Disinformation

Fake news has been a huge topic over the past few years within media. (RichVintage/Getty Images)

Fake news is a tough thing to define. In a basic sense, it is what it is called. Fake news. Things being published that are untrue. Similar to the idea of propaganda.

Fake news is often published and put out in order for advertising or to make money. A lot of ads seen on social media are fake news.

The satirical identity of fake news is sometimes hard to spot. That is where people run into issues of being caught by it.

The rise of social media has brought fake news to the forefront more than ever. Fake news is not a new thing, but with the speed and efficiency content and news can be put out, more fake news comes in turn.

It is a tough issue, because so many different people are dragged into believing things that are published as fake news.

Thinking about how fake news could be slowed down, you have to look at the idea of the companies that it is published on.

Meta is the perfect example. Owners of Facebook and Instagram, fake news is splattered all over their platforms every minute.

But, is it really their fault? Can they really do anything about it?

Certainly, to a point, big companies like Meta have to carry some blame. Platforms that are as big as Instagram and Facebook are great for being so big, but they run into these issues of it being really hard to monitor everything that is posted on social media.

The blame of the growth of it is a similar thought. It is very tough to monitor what happens with things posted on their platforms. But from an alternate perspective, a better system needs to be developed to catch fake news posts before they even have a chance to grow big.

As journalists, we can combat the issue of fake news by sticking to the morals that we were taught, and continue to share the truth and only the truth to the people who care about what we have to say.