Fake News Eliminates the Ground of Factuality
Modern mankind is exposed to the constant bombardment of information in the new media environment and not able to defend himself. Once he was the subject of understanding and questioning, he has now turned out to be a defenceless object of consumption. Rescuing the mankind staying under the bombardment of manipulative, meaningless and inconsistent information out of his defencelessness has become today’s one of the basic problems.
The issue of “fake news” being discussed in the context of traditional media has become a bigger problem due to the increasing effect of the new media. Serious discussions in relation to this problem are held on national and global levels. As a matter of fact, according to the study in 2018 carried out by a group of scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the reaching rate of the fake/misleading information to 1500 people shared on Twitter is 6 times higher than the shared correct information. Another finding that attracted our attention is that retweeting the fake/misleading information among users is % 70 higher than the shared correct information. “The most alluring” area where unreal information is intensively shared most is politics!
Especially, whilst the fake news produced and rapidly disseminated on online social media are discussed also as a problem of security, some states endeavour to take measures against the terror of fake news. As you’ll remember, the debates about the Cambridge Analytica that had taken place in UK during the Brexit and also in the USA during the presidency elections of Donald Trump became the main item of the agenda relating to a scandal revealing that private information of some people were denounced so as to manipulate the elections. Moreover, a metaphor “gangsters” was used in the House of Parliament in UK for the administrators of Facebook. Later on, United Kingdom passed a law in its Parliament namely “Online Security Law” to protect its society from the discomforting contents and disinformation on digital platforms and authorised Ofcom to monitor the harmful online contents. Also Germany and France has put tight regulations into implementation on the area of online social media.
Today, fake news is evaluated with all its social aspects as a manipulation tool that might cause panic in society by preventing people from their accession to correct information. Just as the General Director of the World Health Organisation Tedros Ghebreyesusm expressed his thoughts in the very outbreak of the Covid-19 Pandemic about how the fake news put into circulation affected the society in a negative way by this remark: “We are not in war with a pandemic solely but also with an infodemic! Infodemic is used as “a global information disease” and means the dissemination of unreal, baseless news that might draw people into fear and cause panic in society. Sometimes these speculations on the pandemic possibly escalating into conspiracy theories may cause the losses in human lives.
Economy of Fake News
Apart from these, we can also mention about the economy of fake news fabrication. Serious studies on the evaluation of the fake news fabricated in the traditional media due to economic concerns were executed. How they defamed their rival firms, how they cheated their consumers, how they gave misleading information about the products in order to give support to their firms with which they had contracts, all have been expressed with the samples by targeting some industries.
We encounter with the similar cases also in the digital world. The academic studies carried out on the case of becoming “viral” which is expressed as an automatic dissemination of a video in an uncontrolled way showed that this way of becoming “viral” is also a marketing technique. The videos which have been deliberately made for a specific purpose are presented as if they were produced under no control and, by this way, they grow up to millions in number and whereupon companies allocate funds for them. These fake news prepared for purpose of, ensuring the orientation of a target group or the creation of subliminal effects for either economic or political reasons are placed into online service especially by the online social media platforms and later on these contents are ensured to be discussed in the traditional media as if they are real.
Against the disinformation fabricated and disseminated both by traditional and new media, also our President Mr. Recep Tayyip ERDOĞAN stated in a live TV programme that some measures would be taken on this issue by underlining that these campaigns have been fabricated deliberately in an organised manner: “By no means we can give permission to the vilification and defamation of people by hiding behind the use of pseudonyms and making calls to our public for rebellion, and our judicial system never tolerates such things. This platform has almost become a cradle of fake news, vilification, propagation of terrorism, calls to rebellion and racism. Whatever you look up for is existent on this platform ranging from defaming people to showing anyone as a target. Our people are constantly provoked by these campaigns which are clearly seen to have been deliberately planned and programmed.”
It was not expected that the State would sit in its chair like a spectator to watch this systematic disinformation underway. The manipulation of the applications that create “Trent Topic” by drawing the user’s attention with tags and give answers with its artificial intelligent applications to the correspondences like a human being cannot be treated as innocent. As stated by our President, the campaigns fabricated with fake news and carried out through the online social media are not of the ones formulated by themselves alone. These are the fictions which have been already planned and whose framework has already and deliberately been drawn.
Ensuring a Collective Fight against Disinformation
Communication method has always been one of the most significant elements that shape up the culture of a society. Therefore, the phenomenon that has differentiated the age of culture in ‘oral tradition’ from the age of culture in ‘written tradition’ cannot be treated as a simple technological development only. This is also the case that the technological advancements bring along the new life ideas and the ways of perception with itself. Therefore, the modern man feeling himself as obliged to be online is constantly exposed to the bombardment of information but cannot defend himself. Once he was the subject of understanding and questioning, he has now turned out to be a defenceless object of consumption. Rescuing the mankind staying under the bombardment of these completely manipulative, meaningless, and inconsistent information out of his defencelessness has become today’s one of the basic problems. As RTUK we are, one of the most basic functions of ours is to contribute to the formulation of a media environment which gives us the utmost priority to the protection of our society from the infodemic and ensures the transformation of individuals into the ones who can think, understand, question everything in a healthy way and make their preferences in line with their own demands.
We all need to increase our digital immunity against the terror of fake news and carry our relations especially with the social media onto a more critical and meticulous environment. We also expect media representatives to be more sensitive towards the unreal news. Fabricating and presenting unreal and fake news to the public can never be tolerated. We will sustain institutionally reminding the media organisations of the ethical principles that they need to comply with and creating the conditions that shall enable each of our citizen to access to the correct news. We will exhibit a collective struggle against the fabrication of fake news which has become a global problem.
Free societies of the future must be resistant against infodemics. We will not be a society like any others which are open wide to affection and easy manipulation. We cannot bow down to being governed by algorithms like robots which move upon commands. We will put all our effort to redesign this system in a more humanistic way through enforcing our sensitiveness against the elements that have spoiled the ecology of information.
MR. EBUBEKİR ŞAHİN
THE PRESIDENT OF THE RADIO AND TELEVISION SUPREME COUNCIL
(This Article has been published on 1st of September, 2021 on Yeni Şafak News, click to read it.)