- 21/07/2017
- Category: Commentaries
Here’s a quick one for you: advancement in information technology means that you can access anything you want to know, and you can then share it to everyone else if you like. This is a simple principle that works in all levels, from a simple Facebook status to full-blown educational websites. IT advancements and the ubiquity of internet access make it easier for people to spread their thoughts. However, no one can easily make sure whether or not the information is actually true, and many have been found out as fake. With this in mind, let’s talk about what’s really at play here: hoax.
Firstly, what is a hoax? It can be defined as “a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as the truth,”[i] quoting from MacDougall’s and Curtis’ book appropriately titled Hoaxes from 1958. Agreeable? Sure, most probably. In this contemporary era, one can often find pieces of news in different sorts of media, be it a social media platform such as Instagram and others alike, to news websites and even Blogspot or WordPress articles which have low credibility levels.
Take Facebook, for example. Since the early stages of Facebook, many hoaxes have been spreading, each goes like this: spurious story heads to Facebook and the shares of its audience. The story then gets posted to various sites and/or blogs with no proper fact-checks, leading Facebook users to find “supplemental evidence” to “validate” their belief. This results in an almost self-validating claim until someone from the hoax-busting side of the pond steps in to find the truth about it and put this mishap to an end.[ii] One of the most recent examples of this was the acknowledgement of Gadjah Mada, an ancient Indonesian Hindu kingdom advisor as the Muslim ‘Gaj Ahmada’, following the recent religious tolerance issue in the country. In the field of governance and politics, many have made hoaxes involving officials such as the former governor of Jakarta, the chief of the national police, and even the country’s president; all seemingly subjected by haters to give them a bad reputation. These cases are only the tip of the iceberg, because plenty more can still be easily found on the web.
The problem is that not only they cover a wide variety of categories, but they don’t line up with what is true and they have easily drawn many people into believing them. We can speculate on why people make and spread these hoaxes – fame, likes and comments, and even a political stance that one can use to influence others. However, it is very important to know how these hoaxes spread, and finding this out means digging deeper into the internet users’ behaviour.
An article of FirstDraft written by Josh Stearns discusses why people share rumors and misinformation in breaking news, and he said, “for some, it is a prank, akin to a crank call for the digital age. For others, it’s a narcissistic effort to rack up likes and followers. Others see a political opportunity and want to hijack people’s attention for their own political or commercial gain”,[iii] similar to what we have acknowledged earlier on. ‘Rumors and misinformation’ themselves are, in essence, what makes a hoax, and spreading them in breaking news does seem to be what we find in many cases.
The behavioral elements that he argues may have caused such acts are: people wanting to help spread the news because they live so close to those; people wanting to make more sense of the world, and thus they support the information they collect; and people want to feel part of the shared experience.[iv] These are all the results of just being who we are as internet users of the current age, and one may see that these key points are soft spots for hoax-makers to spread their false information with the objectives we’ve come to expect. And logically, the more people there are on the web, the faster it spreads.
All in all, the issue of hoax may not come to an end soon, because we as the users of technologically advanced means of communication are some naturally-set validating machines if you will. We tend to pay attention to relevant information coming at us, and more often than not the ones based on falsehood make it to the top of people’s minds. Can we stop the spread of hoaxes? Most probably not, considering the sheer size of the internet and the number of people engaged in it. However, it is perhaps best for each of us to understand how our minds work when coming across a breaking news and what to do with it. One thing is for sure – anything in the cyber world can be untrue, and you may believe them. It requires wisdom for you to stay on the
[i] MacDougall, C.D., 1958. Hoaxes (Vol. 465). Dover Pubns.
[ii] Lacapria, K. (2014). Here’s Why Facebook Hoaxes Spread So Quickly, And What You Can Do To Stop It. [online] Social News Daily. Available at: http://socialnewsdaily.com/25179/heres-why-facebook-hoaxes-spread-so-quickly-and-what-you-can-do-to-stop-it/ [Accessed 18 Jun. 2017].
[iii] Stearns, J. (2016). Why do people share rumours and misinformation in breaking news?. [online] First Draft News. Available at: https://firstdraftnews.com/people-share-misinformation-rumors-online-breaking-news-events/ [Accessed 9 Jul. 2017].
[iv] Stearns, J. (2016). Why do people share rumours and misinformation in breaking news?. [online] First Draft News. Available at: https://firstdraftnews.com/people-share-misinformation-rumors-online-breaking-news-events/ [Accessed 10 Jul. 2017].
Heading picture taken from: pexels.com
