Junk news? Real news? Fake news?
Are you able to separate junk news from real news?
It’s safe to say that we are all aware of the term fake news… and that it was popularised by one of our ‘favourite’ celebrity politicians during the 2016 US election cycle: Donald Trump.
But do you know what junk news is?
‘Junk news is political news and information that is sensational, extremist, conspiratorial, severely biased or commentary masked as news’ (Howard, 2020, p.15).
Howard introduced the term, in book Lie machines, after realising that certain ‘facts were correct, but the conclusions didn’t make sense’ (Howard, 2020, p.86), therefore could not be labelled as fake.
In a study by the Oxford Internet Institute (which Howard also led), they defined a criterion for how news can be labelled as junk.
Every social media user, at some point, has come across a junk news story, whether it was on social media or talked about on live television, such as:
- Michelle Obama never placed her hand over heart during national anthem!
- Chelsea Clinton tweets ‘Pizzagate’ is real!
- Trump tower opens in Pyongyang!
You may have even laughed at some of the absurdities and shared it with peers. At a glance, junk news stories don’t seem harmful, certainly not more than fake news. However, they are, possibly more threatening than fake news and here’s why.
Junk news stories are shared and ‘consumed because they are addictive’ (Venturini, 2019, p.126), it is often compared to junk food in terms of how easily we consume it. Junk news ‘saturates public debate, leaving little space to other discussions, reducing the richness of public debate’ (Venturini, 2019, p.126).
Junk news is prevalent online, and with how accessible and easily spread it is, it can have fatal consequences. An example of how junk news can become violent is the 2021 Capitol riots.
Throughout the election, Trump had been making allegations, discrediting Biden and criticising the ballot process. When the results were announced and Joe Biden was announced as the next president, ‘Trump refused to accept the election results’ (Putri, 2021). Trump went on twitter to share his rage with his supporters and ‘in a 70-minute address, Mr Trump exhorted them to march on Congress’ (Cabral, 2021).
Enraged Trump supporters marched to the Capitol building and the protest was anything but peaceful. Marchers stormed the building, broke in, vandalised the building in an attempt to stop Biden’s acceptance as president after believing that the election has been rigged.
In the previous post I had shared how authoritarian governments and regimes were at risk of junk news circulation as a ‘pretence to consolidate their control over information and supress dissent’ (Freedom house, 2018). However, democratic countries are in as much danger as there have been steady ‘internet freedom declines in the United States’ (Freedom house, 2018) and with the example above showcasing the results of steady junk news.
Journalists in India, a country which prides itself as the world’s largest democracy (Biswas, 2021), are also fighting junk news during elections. Research showed ‘more than a quarter of content shared on Facebook and WhatsApp’ (Guinee, 2019) by the BJP (political party) was junk news. The amount of junk news that obliterates the news during politics has led India to have been labelled an ‘electoral autocracy’ (Biswas, 2021).
Junk news is merely a compartment in the construction if the Lie machine and is an imminent threat to democracies across the globe.
In the next post I will be exploring WHY we are susceptible to junk news, stay tuned.
Bibliography
Bhatt, D., Shetty, P., & Rane, J. (2016). DNA: Junk news. [paper art]. Pix orange advertising imagery. https://pixorange.in/dna-junk-news
Biswas, S. (2021, Mar 16). ‘Electoral autocracy’: The downgrading of India’s democracy. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-56393944
Cabral, S. (2021, Feb 14). Capitol riots: Did Trump’s words at rally incite violence? BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55640437
Emery, D. (2018, Jun 14). Dis a Trump tower open in Pyongyang? Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-tower-opens-pyongyang/
Freedom house. (2018, Oct 31). The rise of digital authoritarianism: Fake news, data collection and the challenge to democracy. https://freedomhouse.org/article/rise-digital-authoritarianism-fake-news-data-collection-and-challenge-democracy
Guinee, S. (2019, May 21). Journalists fighting fake news during Indian election face threats, abuse. Committee to protect journalists. https://cpj.org/2019/05/india-elections-online-harassment-female-journalists/
Howard, P. N. (2020). Lie machines: How to save democracy from troll armies, deceitful robots, junk news operations, and political operatives. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv10sm8wg.
Irwin, A. (25 Oct 2018). Facebook and Twitter need a redesign to fight junk news. Horizon, The EU research and innovation magazine. [Screenshot]. https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/facebook-and-twitter-need-redesign-fight-junk-news
Macguill, D. (2018, May 7). Michelle Obama never placed her hand over her heart during the national anthem? Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/michelle-obama-anthem-heart/
Mikkelson, D. (2018, Jun 11). Did Chelsea Clinton tweet that ‘Pizzagate is real’? Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chelsea-clinton-pizzagate-tweet/
Putri, J. (2021, Dec 9). The age of fake news: How fake news marred the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Center for Digital Society. https://cfds.fisipol.ugm.ac.id/2021/12/09/the-age-of-fake-news-how-fake-news-marred-the-2020-u-s-presidential-election/
Venturini, T. (2019). From fake to junk news: The data politics of online virality. In D. Bigo, E. Isin & E. Ruppert (Ed.), Data Politics (pp. 123–144). Routledge.
