Fake News: It’s Real and It Matters
Typically and historically, political forces on the right
(conservative) side of the political spectrum rather than on the left
(liberal) side generate and spread fake news and claims of fake news
more often. “On Facebook, extreme hard right pages . . . share the
widest range of known junk news sources and circulate more junk
news than all the other audiences put together,” wrote technology
researchers from Oxford University in Britain in 2018. Psychologists
say that people with conservative leanings tend to be warier of
danger and potential threats, such as threats of crime or terrorism,
than are liberals. And since many fake news stories tell of secret
plots, crimes, and other frightening events, they are more likely to
capture the attention of conservatives than of liberals. “Conservatives
approach the situation from the start with greater [reaction] to threat,
a greater prior belief [as] to the level of danger in the world, so it is
logical for the conservative to take more seriously information about
hazards than the liberal does,” explains Daniel Fessler, a professor of
anthropology at the University of California–Los Angeles.
What Fake News Isn’t
The tactic of claiming that a legitimate news story is fake is typically
used by politicians and other public figures to dismiss real news stories
that present them in a negative light. Donald Trump, who won the
US presidential election in 2016, often charges that stories that accurately
accuse him or his associates of wrongdoing are “fake news.” But he isn’t
alone. A number of other US politicians have adopted this technique.
Paul LePage, the governor of Maine, dismissed a 2017 story about him
considering a run for the US Senate as “fake news.” LePage’s beef with
the story was that it did not adequately praise his accomplishments
as governor and that it included quotes from a liberal political science
professor. Brooke Ashjian, president of the school board in Fresno,
California, accused a local reporter of writing fake news in a series of
critical newspaper articles about high rates of teen pregnancy in Fresno.
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