Image by Daniel Lobo
Locally, elections have been happening in Tucson this week. Thinking back to the 2016 presidential election, I find myself with so many questions about what really happened when it came to political social media. Candidates and political parties were not the only ones sharing “facts” about the election.
Many fake news sources began publishing information on the internet about both U.S. presidential candidates Trump and Clinton. Buzzfeed found that more than 100 of these fake news sources were being run from a small town in Macedonia. This particular hub of fake news published mainly positive news about President Trump.
Buzzfeed noticed that right before the election, more people were engaged with the fake news sites than the real news sites. This is something that has not affected past elections, but certainly will come into play in future elections.
To learn more about fake news, the Buzzfeed study, and the U.S. Election of 2016, check out this video from PBS.
-Hannah Leigh Johnson
I am very familiar with the article that you are talking about and have read several other reports about other hives of people create fake news all over eastern Europe. I feel like though that we aren’t the first country to experience this since this effort was so well executed. I do think this is the new norm due to the openness of the internet. I don’t really see a way to stop this, do you?
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