Author:
Dorian Davis.
Research has shown a Ying to the Yang of “collective intelligence,” a “collective credulity” to which surprising numbers of the public are susceptible (Mocanu, Rossie, Zhang, Karsai, & Quattrociocchi, 2014). An example of this “collective credulity” is the misinterpretation of fake news. I argue here that proliferation of social media platforms has helped disseminate that brand of satire to users absent the frame of reference to decode its message: “If this is true, it’s disgusting,” one Facebook user commented (Hongo, 2014) on a piece from The Onion titled, “Labron James Leaning Toward Joining Al Qaeda.” As more of the public gets its news from social media (Anderson & Caumont, 2014), it’s important that users be able to discern fact from fiction. With that goal in mind, I’ll outline here factors that lead users to misread fake news on two social media, Twitter and Facebook. I’ll introduce the term Echo Effect to describe that process, and draw on the #CancelColbert campaign as an example. Afterward, I’ll make recommendations to prevent users from misinterpreting fake news on those platforms, and preview future research.
