In this day and age how do we know what is false and what is true in the media we consume?
Fake news "operates under the guise of credible journalism to convince you of a falsehood – usually for
political or monetary gain. It only works when you
don’t know it’s a lie. In
short, satire plays with its audience; fake news preys on its audience".
(Scott Anderson, University of Toronto Magazine)
The visualizations in this webpage, concentrate on and display
different
types of fake
news that include, political
and tabloid stories that are sometimes ridiculous, disturbing and even "somewhat true". It is the
fake stories that are almost true – almost believeable, that create the most confusion and mistrust.
Facebook, and X are key players in the spread of fake news and misinformation. Other sites that pop up
(are published then pulled down) perpetuate the problem we face.
Source:
Univeristy
of Toronto Magazine
Attributed to top keyword usage (based on data collected by Research Gate) these stories
include attention grabing headlines that are often explicit with the intention to shock. The fake news
highlighed here, are just some examples, used to show how many
times false stories, despite appearing unbelieveable and ridiculous, are retweeted and engaged
with.
Dataset: Kaggle Fake News
(2017)
Keyword
attribution:Research
Gate
The U.S. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes.
FalseBarely TrueSomewhat TrueTruePoliticians receive full pay retirement after serving 1 term!
FalseBarely TrueSomewhat TrueTruePolitics is the playground of fake news and where fake news arguably originated. It is
defintely a topic we
see
a large number of false stories fall under.
It is not clear whether the more absurd stories engaged with are shared for the
sake of
humor or to truly misinform us, but regardless, the magnitude of false stories that appear to be
somewhat true, make it much harder to decipher the truth.
Debunked stories by Politifact.com fact checking. (2013-2020)
Whether a news platform is legitimate or not, the media in general benefits from the amount
of consumer traffic they receive from fake news.
Dataset: Kaggle Fake News (2017)
The bottom line is, this project does not illustrate ways of becoming better at
distinguishing
between fake and real stories. What this project highlights is how urgent
and apparent it is to check the sources and the news we are consumming, especially when in doubt.
Author: Neven Armanios. Data Visualization Information Aesthetics, Fall 2023. The New School, Parsons School of Design (2023).