In the age of technology, social media is the best platform to disseminate news or information and exchange ideas in a quick manner.
However, while it is considered a tool of convenience, it is also a threat for society when used to circulate fake news to a large number of people.
Online spreading of fake news has becoming a major issue that threatens our society and this is enabled by social networks and online media sites.
According to New Ipsos study (2018), 69 per cent of Malaysians say they have seen deliberately fake reports in the media fairly regularly.
48 per cent of Malaysians think other people don’t care about facts anymore, they just believe what they want.
Today, the presence of fake news online is not something new.
Operating a fake news website is frequently and often successfully done because it can be easily replicated, streamline and requires little expertise to manage.
On a nutshell, creating fake news requires making or taking content produced (that may or not be real) by others and pass them off as real news.
The news that are often taken from their original sites are often known to be satirical and readers who read them know they are not real stories.
This process is fairly easy as it only requires the creator of the fake news site to copy and paste from other website content to make headlines.
Typically, online users are prone to be attracted to catchy headlines regardless whether the news is true or not.
The objective of making these content is to get as many visitors to their site as possible and then capitalize them on social media.
Typically, these types of sites will take their users to see more content that promotes their ideology or values or to see more advertising as the creators need as many visitors to click on the website link.
And when this happened, the creator is will be able to make money for each visit to their site as well as through advertising on the page.
Generally, the ad companies are able to use tracking data that websites collect based on the users’ web history.
Through these data, advertising companies are able to build consumers’ profile that allows them to target the ads that are will mostly attract visitors.
Hence, the more fake news sites a creator are able to create, the more clicks or visits they get from users and the more advertising they can get.
The awareness of the circulation of fake news on social media may have increase over time.
However, it can still create a huge issue among our society as they are some still believes the content.
Fake news is often created to be sensational and thus can easily be shared and spread rapidly.
This and combine with readers who already have bias perception of certain issue as to what to believe will make fake news more spread faster. Hence, the only way to combat the spread of fake news is to be vigilant about the things that we read online and do take time to learn how to spot fake ones from real ones and identify the source of the news.
