ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET

Student's Pelina John Tristan

name
Subject English for Academic and Professional Purposes (EAPP)

Title of assignment Position Paper

Teacher Marie Daisylyn V. Tiquis

Is this an authorized group assignment?                                     ☐ Yes     ☐ No

Due date: May 27, 2022 Date submitted: May 27, 2022

If an extension of work is granted, this must be specified with the lecturer's signature in charge.
Extension granted until (date) .....................   Signature of teacher .............................
Student Statement:

 I declare that no part of this assignment has been previously submitted as part of
another module.

 I acknowledge and agree that the lecturer in charge may: 

i. submit my assignment to a text-matching/originality checking software; and

i. Please retain a copy of the assignment on its database for future plagiarism
checking.

 In preparing this assignment, I have not plagiarized the work of others or participated
in unauthorized collaboration.
   
Signature ..................................................... Date: May 27, 2022
 The Pervasiveness of Fake News in Open Online Media Platforms

Fake news, in essence, spreads like a contagious virus because of people's

ignorance. It might be considered an archetypal quality of an individual's existence

since people have been bombarded with various information since their childhood

when their parents tell stories that they made up, such as white lies and

extraordinary fairy tales. On the other hand, fake news is not a harmless childhood

experience in adulthood since it can have serious consequences. For example, in

the Philippines' 2022 presidential elections, misleading information caused voters to

alter their views about one candidate and vote for the other. Moreover, the spread of

fake news was made possible by various online social media platforms such as

Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

According to Shao, Ciampaglia, Varol, Flammini, and Filippo Menczer (2017),

people are vulnerable to fake information because they do not question the facts;

they acquire it from reputable sources they know such as influencers and channels

they feel dependable. Confirmation bias might be at blame for this. Confirmation bias

is the tendency to absorb information by seeking or interpreting information that

confirms one's existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision-making is often

unintentional and results in the rejection of contradictory information. For example,

Quitzon (2021) discovered that individuals were far more inclined to trust fake news

if the information was favorable to their candidate during the Philippine presidential

election.

More than 90% of Filipinos with internet access use social media. However, the

number of Filipinos who fact-check information might even be counted using our
hands. This might be due to people's complete ignorance and lack of responsibility

when using social media. They might be Internet users who have chosen the so-

called negative model of conduct. The main contributors to fake news spread in the

internet media might be 'trolls' or falsifiers — haters and 'abusers' or ideological

racists and extremists. Although when most fake news victims are presented with

facts and debunked information, they will still blindly trust the fake news because it

aligns with their personal beliefs. Their engagements and admiration for the fake

news they interact with keep adding fuel to the fire of spreading misleading

information.

Fake news, a knowledge crisis, and ignorance can all be fatal. These can

collectively change views and policies on critical ecological, social, and political

concerns, putting the whole nation at risk. For this reason, we must be concerned

about the propagation of fake news. On the other hand, fighting fake news entails

fact-checking the stories we hear and holding the information we consume and the

people or places we receive it from accountable. The first line of defense against

problematic news sources and deceptive material is to act as a critical consumer of

information.

Stopping fake news would be a long and challenging battle, but some things we

can do now include: helping debunk fake news by reporting it as wrongly and

manipulated information; installing a browser extension that identifies stories from

sites that produce clickbait, fake news, and other suspicious narratives; expanding

our information network to include diverse perspectives from quality sources; and,

most importantly, not engaging with fake news because doing so would increase its

audience reach to more ignorant people and the victims of fake news would never

end.
 References

[1] Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016
election. Journal of economic perspectives, 31(2), 211-36.
[2] Hopf, H., Krief, A., Mehta, G., & Matlin, S. A. (2019). Fake science and the
knowledge crisis: ignorance can be fatal—Royal Society open science, 6(5),
190161.
[3] Kucharski, A. (2016). Study epidemiology of fake news. Nature, 540(7634), 525-
525.
[4] Shao, C., Ciampaglia, G. L., Varol, O., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2017). The
spread of fake news by social bots. arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.07592, 96, 104.
[5] Quitzon, J. (2021, November 22). Social Media Misinformation and the 2022 Philippine

Elections. Center for Strategic and International Studies. Retrieved May 22, 2022,

from https://www.csis.org/blogs/new-perspectives-asia/social-media-misinformation-

and-2022-philippine-elections