Rumor Has it

Sophee Sanderson @socialsophee

A few years ago, I discovered some information about a family member. I had a couple more finals to complete before I could go home for the holidays and I was way too eager to share what I had found out with my mom and my sister.

Now, this is a cousin who we have always had a strong intuition on (so many Pisces in my family♓) and sharing this information was not only absolutely entertaining, but it would finally prove to everyone else that he wasn't who they thought he was. Not to forget that it would confirm that I was right all along. Before my sister and I shared this information with anyone else, we did a lot of digging to make sure we were absolutely right about these accusations and gathered evidence directly from the source. We collected our receipts and exposed him to the family. It felt amazing for everyone to finally believe us and see him for who he really is, but it took a lot of proof to convince everyone.

Often times, we are quick to spread a secret we hear. Good or bad, we want to be the first ones to tell our friends... we want to be the person who spills the tea and fills everyone in, but we usually don't dig that deep to discover the truth. Most times it's just rumors that get twisted around, just like in the game of Telephone, and we usually don't have any evidence to back up our story-- it's usually just, "well he said, she said" or "rumor has it..."

Social media users tend to quickly spread breaking news stories and trending narratives without considering the accuracy of the story. 

I'll admit, when I see a story online, whether it's about politics or celebrity gossip, I usually will trust it right away if it's coming from a source that I usually depend on. I'll also admit that I can be too lazy to read the whole story and seeing the headline is sometimes enough for me😆. I am guilty of not always finding the direct source or digging for more information to back up my beliefs. Maybe I don't care enough about what I'm hearing or reading as much as I did with exposing my cousin, because I sure as hell made sure I had proof!

The spread of misinformation on social networks is because of people like me. I am not big on sharing news related stories on Facebook or Twitter, but I am quick to screenshot and send them to my friends. Despite how I pass this information along, I am still to blame for spreading stories that I never even bother to fact-check.

I think one reason we spread stories without fact-checking is because we think we know how to detect fake news. The first step in putting a stop to the spread of false news is knowing how to spot it, but maybe we have too much confidence in ourselves. 

In an article posted by ScienceDirect, researchers shared how to detect breaking news rumors of emerging topics in social media and they proposed a new approach that uses word embeddings and trains a recurrent neural network with two different objectives to automatically identify rumors. 

I often wonder why Internet users do not fact-check when we have the tools to do so right at our fingertips!

In "The Influencing Machine," Brooke Gladstone discusses how there is often a belief that the media controls our minds and with new emerging media platforms and technologies, the belief only grows stronger.

However, Gladstone rejects that idea. Instead, the media simply reflects what society wants and needs. Maybe social media and online news sites are just fulfilling our basic needs of needing to read a good story or wanting some hot gossip. Maybe they dramatize the story and amplify the details for our satisfaction. 

Do you trust your own ability to detect real news from the BS? When you share a story, do you back it up with evidence? Maybe consider how you can help put a stop to fake stories online next time you are scrolling social media. The way that rumors get spread around with friends and family is the same way misinformation gets spread around online. Consider finding the direct source of a story before you spread it.

It would make the world a better place on and offline 🌎🌐😁😃.