Research Paper Sample: The Readers Responsibility in Monitoring Fake News

Readers of news articles and social media users should be responsible and play their role of checking the sources of the information and news found on social media and news websites. Readers should have a critical approach towards information in social media to avoid believing and spreading fake news which is misleading to the audience. Social media users should bear the responsibility for monitoring fake news. Readers should have the morality of only embracing news that can be verified and disregarding news that is fabricated by politicians to achieve individual ambitions (Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow 214). Social media companies such as Facebook should educate their users on how to easily verify controversial news in their media using technological applications such as Snopes.com which easily assesses the validity of the articles in social media for the readers without much effort (Batchelor, Oliver 143).

Creating awareness amongst social media users on the need to vet every information to identify the source will be effective to reduce the control and fabrication of misleading information to create bias in the reader`s opinion and decisions (Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow 219). Social media and news media companies are profit-oriented organizations which have always been aware of fake news nut has done nothing regarding the use of propaganda in their mainstream media to discredit institutions and also to sway the American voters especially in the 2016 elections. Ignorance amongst the majority of social media users and news readers is the main cause of the continued use of fake news. The political division of the people and different religious beliefs. Despite the ease of verifying every information in social media, the blissful ignorance amongst the users makes it difficult to eradicate fake news (Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow 215).

Despite having highly capable algorithms to reduce the amount of fake news getting to the audience Facebook has been unable to carry out any action against fake news due to their inclination towards making profits. Readers should take the initiative to use simple and convenient platforms such as Snopes.com to identify false news. With 62% of the American population getting news from social media the implications of social media are large and can only be mitigated by educating the news consumers to verify the source of the news to differentiate between factual and fabricated news (Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow 212). The Constitution through the 1st amendment allows for freedom of speech in which the government does not have any authority to crack down on news media corporations and social media company unless of course, it is a matter of national security (Massaro et al., 2015 p. 375). The inability of the government to intervene in the circulation and the creation of fake news which they are also part of makes it only sensible for individual readers to verify the authenticity of the news content they read both in social media and newsprints organizations (Chen, Adrian 5).

Works Cited

Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow. "Social media and fake news in the 2016 election." Journal of Economic Perspectives31.2 (2017): 211-36.

Batchelor, Oliver. "Getting out the truth: the role of libraries in the fight against fake news." Reference Services Review 45.2 (2017): 143-148.

Chen, Adrian. "The agency." The New York Times 2.6 (2015): 2015. 1-10

Massaro, Toni M., and Robin Stryker. "Freedom of speech, liberal democracy, and emerging evidence on civility and effective democratic engagement." Ariz. L. Rev. 54 (2012): 375.

Rainie, Harrison, Janna Quitney Anderson, and Jonathan Albright. The future of free speech, trolls, anonymity and fake news online. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2017: 1-275