Anishka Jannu Week #1 - Power of Language in Shaping the Media
Language is becoming more crucial in determining whether news is fake or not. In the past ten years, the use of social media has caused an increase in the spread of fake news. This is because social media makes it easy for false rumors to circulate.
Spreading false information has a lot of negative effects. One of these consequences is the presidential elections. In 2016, a survey found that, “during the campaign voters were exposed to higher number of pro-Trump than pro-Clinton articles” (Bondielli). During elections, publicity and advertising is one of the most important factors to changing voters who are undecided. The distribution of media articles being more pro-Trump suggests that more people who regularly use the Internet were inclined to voting for Trump instead of Clinton. Language has a major role in news because, most of the time, supposedly unbiased articles can end up being biased.
Another form of bias in news articles is the specific selection of evidence. Some authors choose to only present select pieces of evidence in their articles. This is a form of fake news because the whole story is not presented. Although the information is accurate, it does not allow the reader to understand the full story. This type of bias is dangerous because readers may believe that they are reading legitimate articles. However, the author actually decides what the reader believes.
This is why it is important for readers to be aware of what they are reading. Readers must be able to distinguish different types of language and understand what is biased. Choosing official sources will allow the reader to place more trust in the articles that they choose.
Changes in the circulation of news inevitably causes us to become more aware of the power of language in our daily lives.
Author links open overlay panelAlessandro Bondielli a b, et al. “A Survey on Fake News and Rumour Detection Techniques.” Information Sciences, Elsevier, 13 May 2019, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0020025519304372.
Hi Anishka, when I first read the title of your blog I was immediately intrigued. I never knew the amount of power social media has on people. When you mentioned the impact of language on presidential elections, on how they can use the power to influence the publics votes, it honestly scares me. I find it concerning that people these days just believe whatever they are told and they don't check their facts. I have seen lots of fake news that was posted on social media and when I checked the comments everyone thought it was real. I did some background research on it and found out that it was all made up. I agree with you, on how people should always double check their facts before believing what other people say on social media. Lots of things that are posted on social media or most likely staged just for the clout. Nowadays lots of people post the most bizarre videos just for some followers. This leads to people believing in nonsense and spreading the nonsense too.
ReplyDeleteHi Anishka. I think you bring up a valid point about how social media affects news because it shows the power of social media and how the words of one person can spread like wildfire. It seems that the issue of fake news and misinformation keeps growing because of how hard it is to control who says which lies, and unfortunately, I don’t think a lot is being done to help it either. Also, I thought it was interesting that you noted the biases in news articles, which I believe are often overlooked when we discuss the spread of misinformation. Journalists and news reporters can choose which information they want to share and can directly influence public opinion. I remember distinctly noticing many journalists’ subtle biases while reading several news articles about one topic for my Current Events Critical Summaries. Each news source I looked at had a slightly varied portrayal of the event, which affected which article I chose. I’m glad that you brought up this topic, and hopefully, we can see some improvement in how news and social media deal with it in the coming years.
ReplyDeleteHi Anishka, I think your blog is really interesting and it is able to touch upon a widespread issue. There is so much bias that is prevalent in the news, articles and other resources that are meant to be reliable. False rumors and accusations can manipulate the opinions of people and the way they perceive things. Many news channels don’t attempt to hide their bias. Fox News, for example, always supports the Republican party by picking and choosing the good things that they have done while choosing to only show the bad things that the Democratic party has done. Your topic reminded of the attack on the U.S Capitol by Trump supporters. This was clearly an act of terrorism but little to no one ever referred to these people as terrorists simply because they were white. Something as simple as choosing to omit one word changes the meaning of all the articles and holds a slight bias towards these people because they are American. Terrorism has been associated with people of color because 9/11, the most infamous terrorist attack, was organized by people of color. This creates the idea that the U.S Capitol attack was not terrorism and therefore, reduces the intensity and violence of the act. There will always be bias in news and media but it is up to us to determine whether we believe it or not.
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ReplyDeleteHey Anishka,
ReplyDeleteYour blog reminded me of a conversation I had with my friends last weekend about Social media activism. We were talking about people who were often on social media platforms like instagram and twitter are exposed to this very specific time of activism because a post will tell you vague details out of context and prompt you to click on an article which like you said will use language to only tell you one side of the story. Which then leads to people online staging protests and claiming a side of the issue when they're barely educated on the subject just because everyone else is doing and it makes them seem woke. It's actually very frustrating and connects to your issue of false news which is closely tied to false activism. So I really like your blog idea for power of language in media because I think it's a problem that a lot of people overlook.
Hi Anishka. We have always been taught a important lesson in English classes to find biases when we write research papers or when we cite our sources. I think in this digital age, information has much more power than we expect where things can spread much faster than we expect. I think while we critic biases a lot it should be factored and not looked away from as it provides more evidence on what each side is arguing towards. I remember that during the early ages of covid there were alot of mis information being spread about COVID, however I think that the platforms quickly found ways to fact check it and curb the amount of false information.
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