While the availability of News and information has
increased, I believe that Social Media has decreased the quality of media. With everyday citizens being able to report
and upload media from their phones and portable devices, we are bombarded now
with stories, photos and videos being posted, uploaded, linked, liked and
shared the instant they are taken, or viewed and passed on as indisputable fact. As a result, we are now being able to hear of
breaking news almost as soon as it happens and before traditional media is able
to report it.
While it is great to be able to learn breaking news much faster and from first hand accounts, the downside is that we are inundated with stories constantly and faster than we can viably check the reliability of sources and accuracy of content. According to the Schools.com infograhic, “49.1% of people have heard breaking news via social media that turned out to be false.” In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, “17% said they often find breaking news on social media sites that has turned out to be untrue. 32% said this has happened to them once or twice, and 51% said it has never happened to them (Pilon).” These particular survey results are of no large surprise to me due to the nature of Social Media and the ease of clicking and “sharing” links and posts without actual investigation. Sure there are a number of people that will investigate a news item before reposting it, but from personal experience, I have found people to be eager to repost or share the juiciest bit of news first without checking out the story itself. Some great examples of this are in the article, 8 Social Media Hoaxes You Fell for This Year by Samantha Murphy on Mashable.com. Many of you would likely remember at least one of them, myself having been shocked as I read the post “RIP Morgan Freeman”.
The article also brings up another good point regarding
these viral ‘news’ stories surrounding pop culture and celebrities. They have become a platform for
cybercriminals to attach malicious links and phishing traps. The article speaks of a particular scam where
Justin Bieber creates his own false news story about his laptop being stolen
and a fake Tweet by the supposed thief planning to release a new video on-line
as a publicity ploy. Unfortunately,
cybercriminals used that story to create malicious links to a phishing
site. These types of scams also happen
quite often in Social Media which is another reason that I have my doubts as to
the quality of the news on it. It is all
too easy to fall for an interesting headline only to click on a link and be
brought to a suspicious site that fails to deliver.
After thinking about the ramifications of this and how many
scams and crazy posts that are shared daily I thought that it might be helpful
to share this article I found on Security Watch. It gives tips and advice on how to spot a
phishing scam from a link or e-mail that may have come in your inbox or from a
Social Media site. I found it very
informative myself:
Sources
Great post Tara! As you said in your first paragraph, I think social media is becoming the new way of how people find out breaking news. In fact, I think traditional media is using social media to break news too. Through 'trusted sources' it seems like the media is 'going with the flow' in terms of how fast the can get news.
ReplyDeleteI also found the article that you have provided very helpful. I often get emails with links sent to me that I have never heard of and wonder why they are sent to me. It provides a lot of good tips to catch spam emails and false addresses, such as paypl.com. Again, good post!