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You know fake news is a problem, but you’re not part of the problem, right? You “heart” photos of your cousin’s newborn. You comment to cheer on a colleague running her first 5K. You retweet a meme, sharing a clever thought.
But take another look at that meme. If it was fake news, or a bot placed by someone trying to stir up controversy, would you spot it?
“In today’s world, nobody can tell for sure that the information they receive is 100 percent accurate and reliable,” says Janey Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor of journalism at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. “Even experts have a hard time weeding out fake accounts and automatic messages.”
You could read and spread inaccuracies from either side of the partisan divide, even if your information comes from political leaders. Last month President Trump falsely claimed that his State of the Union address drew the biggest audience ever. And U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders incorrectly told NBC’s Meet the Press that 40 percent of guns sold in the U.S. don’t involve a background check.
Bots push people apart
Fake news divides people, and bots can make those divisions worse. Bots are a form of artificial intelligence that can mimic human behavior. They can retweet a story or push a link, aiming to polarize people. Many are linked to Russia. “What the Russian bots are trying to do is sow discord and make us fight,” says Randall Minas Jr., assistant professor and head of the Information Technology Management Association at the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii.
Bots pick up on keywords or hashtags in controversial topics and use computer algorithms to create and spread extreme views that emotionally arouse people. “Those messages can create a perception of serious political polarization and huge divisions in society,” says Lee.
When you have 320 million people disagreeing on what truth is, that can do much more damage to society than hacking into the State department.
When you have 320 million people disagreeing on what truth is, that can do much more damage to society than hacking into the State department.
Networks of bots can spread messages quickly, fooling social media platforms and creating the perception that a topic is trending, when in fact it’s just being posted and retweeted by computers. People then believe that these trending topics reflect what most people think. If they see contrasting opinions trending, they believe that there is a huge division in public opinion.
“Bots don’t create trends, they amplify them. That’s what we saw in Florida when David Hogg became a trending topic on multiple platforms. Bots were pushing that,” says Sam Huxley, practice chair of risk and business strategy, for the communications firm LEVICK. He’s referring to the claims that “crisis actors,” not actual students, were playing the roles of the teenagers who survived the Parkland school shootings.
Bots don’t create trends, they amplify them.
Bots don’t create trends, they amplify them.
Why we fall for fake news
Paid actors stirring up trouble in a time of crisis can seem almost unbelievable, but our brains have powerful instincts toward resolving conflict, explains Minas. Here’s how our brains do it. Say you’re in favor of AR-15 rifles and you find out that the AR-15 was used to kill 17 people in Florida. You are faced with an internal conflict, or what experts call cognitive dissonance. You feel good about the AR-15, but bad about the kids. So, when you hear the fake news that those kids were just paid crisis actors, you feel better. You see that news repeated in your social media feeds, and you believe it must be true. You can discount the severity of the Florida school shooting and continue to feel good about the AR-15. Your conflict is resolved.
Paid actors stirring up trouble in a time of crisis can seem almost unbelievable, but our brains have powerful instincts toward resolving conflict.
Paid actors stirring up trouble in a time of crisis can seem almost unbelievable, but our brains have powerful instincts toward resolving conflict.
Minas worries about the threat created by fake news and bots. “Hacking into minds, which is essentially what’s happening, is difficult to prove,” he says. “When you have 320 million people disagreeing on what truth is, that can do much more damage to society than hacking into the State department.”