EOTO: Terms & Concepts

    According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of Disinformation is, "false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth." We now currently use the words "fake news" as another way of saying disinformation. The two words mean the same thing and are not new words we've made up in the last few years, but we can give credit to President Donald Trump for resurfacing the word fake news. According to csmonitor.com President Trump first used this term in an interview in 2017. 

    Disinformation takes place in a multitude of ways within our society. This is not something that is all deliberate but still occurs very frequently. I believe this happens because of the access we have to technology but also due to the political stance that each individual news station has, this is somewhat of an unspoken idea but it plays into how news stations report different events. npr.org shows this within an article they released, Same News, Different Spins: Check These Headlines About The Jobs Report, below are two photos of two same stories reported differently.  This goes to show how easily word choice can lead to disinformation and the spread of it. 

    

    Brookings.edu released a variety of graphs in 2017 showing where people get their news from, people's trust in the media, and also what sources do people get news from online. The graph below shows the overall change in the news sources. As you can see in the graph below most all people get their news from TV or online news sources. This is not necessarily a bad thing but we also can't believe everything we read on the internet.

    Disinformation spreads not only through the news put through everyday people publishing what they think to be true on the internet, this can happen through Instagram, Twitter, and even personal blogs such as this one. David Wolfe an American author posted to his blog cautioning reading to stop eating peanut butter cups, specifically Reese's. Wolfe warns people that the ingredients in Reese's are dangerous therefore people should make their own. There could be a small truth behind this but then again it is not very likely because if this was true the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would have most likely pulled this tasty candy from the shelves a long time ago. According to libguides.valenciacollege.edu Wofle's post of disinformation led to led to over 207,000 shares on Facebook. To read Wolfe's full article you can visit his blog at www.davidwolfe.com.
    I do believe that the spread of misinformation is greater now than ever due to the multitude of news sources that are present along with the presents of social media in our society. There are plenty of ways we can protect ourselves from disinformation but this takes effort, each individual has to seek out multiple news sources and see how the information is different within each other to find the truth they believe.