The Junk News In The Fake-News Fallacy Chen

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Lately all we hear about is fake news this, fake news that; this has us constantly be on our toes about whether or not the news article we’re even reading is real. In a world where we are more connected than ever, it’s very hard to not share new information; but in light of the recent election there’s started to be a rise of fake news on various social media outlets. The thing is that a lot of people have a hard time telling real news from fake news apart and when someone reads a fake article and shares it. It can cause major problems because these articles have a tendency of spreading like wildfire. What we don’t realize is that this concept of fake news has been around for a very long time. Adrian Chen highlights this in his article The Fake-News …show more content…

In order to prove this, he appeals to logic by providing examples of these situations. For instance, in the beginning of the article he talks about how in 1983 Orson Welles made a radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds and the following day newspapers were reporting that there was mass hysteria from people having heart attacks from the shock to civilians rushing into police stations to report what was going on; but in reality, “there was no mass hysteria, only small pockets of concern that quickly burned out.” (Chen) He uses actual scenarios that happened in our history to back up that fake news has been around and sometimes the ones that have actually partaken in spreading fake news themselves are one of the most trusted outlets for news, newspapers. He also uses this to kind of address the fact that fake news can also be an exaggeration of the truth and not just something that’s completely made up. Chen also highlights the fact that because we’re living in such a technologically connected society that it helps pave way for fake news going viral. Adrian Chen states, “The ‘share’ button sends lies flying around the Web faster than fact checkers can de- bunk them.” Not just does this talk about how things can be shared at a faster rate than before it introduces the reader to the fact that even though there are new soft wares trying to create new and innovative ways of making sure the article is real still can’t perform at the rate that fake news articles are being input into the

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