Media literacy more important than ever
Misinformation is a staple of the internet, with satire news sites such as The Onion, The Beaverton and others existing on the platform for years.
With the rise of AI and the upcoming presidential election, finding articles spreading misinformation is easy, with people choosing a narrative that fits their truth‚ whether the facts bear it out or not.
At the presidential debate, Sept. 10, former president Donald Trump claimed Haitian immigrants in Ohio, are, “eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” His vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, agreed.
Those claims were provably false. ABC News anchor and debate co-moderator, David Muir, went to Springfield, Ohio’s city manager to check the claims and was told there were no credible reports of pets being harmed, injured or abused by people in the city’s immigrant community.
Trump has also made false accusations against the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. In his North Carolina rally in August, he claimed the only way she could actually win was by cheating and how it was “unconstitutional” for the Democratic party to replace Biden as the candidate.
Neither of these claims are true, as any candidate has a chance of winning the election fairly and Biden dropped out of the presidential race before he was considered to be the official Democratic nominee.
The elections are just one drop in the sea of internet misinformation, ever increasing with the rising tide of artificial intelligence in Google searches.
In May, Google released a program called AI Overviews which acts as a search feature. However, this new algorithm is far from accurate. Within days of AI Overviews’ release in the U.S., the program suggested users add glue to pizza, eat at least one small rock a day, and that former president Andrew Johnson earned university degrees between 1947 and 2012, despite dying in 1875.
The first example came from a joke on Reddit and the second was an article from The Onion.
When AI is trained to find information in a sea of joke advice, satire and just plain falsehoods, the consequences can be dire.
Not everyone can tell the difference between fake and real news. What would happen if someone read these results and truly believed they should eat one small rock every day? It sounds like a future dental bill waiting to happen.
Additionally, AI photos and videos are becoming more common across social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest and X, formally known as Twitter, with some people believing them to be real pictures.
With the rise of social media as a news outlet, more people are becoming misinformed about important topics. A 2022 study found that when TikTok users searched for top news stories, almost 20% of the videos returned contained misinformation.
It also doesn’t help that social media content is a curated algorithm, intended to keep the consumer on the app as long as possible. A 2019 study confirmed social media apps like Facebook prioritized posts with a majority of “angry emojis,” which statistically were more likely to be classified as misinformation.
In terms of finding the truth, the internet is a double-edged sword, with accurate information on one side, and misinformed hysteria on the other. As Green Day’s song, “American Idiot,” illustrates, we are, “One nation controlled by the media, an information age of hysteria and it’s calling out to idiot America.”
For this narrative to change, we must inform ourselves and others and seek out credible news sources. Sure, it takes work. But the alternative is believing the Earth is flat. I read it on the internet so it must be true.