Thesis statement on fake news

Instructor Robert Musante

May 21, 2017

Full Title: Fake News Outline

I. Introduction

Thesis statement: Fake news is difficult to identify with the amount of material and content provided to the consumer, but the consumer is ultimately responsible for the ingesting and regurgitating the material, as appose to the source of the material being at fault.

A.

II. Body Paragraph

A. Claim: The consumer has the ultimate responsibility of accepting the material as truth or not.

1. Evidence: In my research I found a summary from a Stanford study that discussed the importance of using online reasoning and dissecting online material (SHEG, 2016).

2. Evidence: There was a YouTube video that mentions to how the evolution of news has changed how we consume it (Brown, 2014).

3. Discussion: This directly falls inline with the argument that we the consumers can make or break a story and have to fact check information before spreading it even further.

III. Body Paragraph

A. Claim: The consumer who gathers information and reposts or shares the information can influence their peers based on peer-to-peer personal relationships. This furthers the information an continues the spread of fake news.

1. Evidence: There was fabricated reporting on Hillary Clinton and illegal activities that spiraled into a viral fake news story (Aisch, Huang & Kang, 2016) this was spread all throughout social media with a hashtag.

2. Evidence: News can be reported but it needs an audience to become relevant if the news has no ground and isn’t received then it is lost.

IV. Body Paragraph

A. Claim: The majority of consumers don’t understand the importance of verifying or playing devils advocate to news stories.

1. Evidence: Some 82% of middle-schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled “sponsored content” and a real news story on a website, according to a Stanford University study of 7,804 students from middle school through college (Shellenbarger, 2016).

2. Evidence: A growing number of schools are teaching students to be savvy about choosing and believing various information sources, a skill set educators label “media literacy.” (Shellenbarger, 2016).

V. Body Paragraph

A. Claim: The risk of creating an echo chamber effect because social media tends to feed users news items similar to those they’ve read before.

1. Evidence: This is a common term online, it occurs when you access a certain site that stores cookies (digital trail of where you have been) and uses it to broadcast later as ads on another site.

2. Evidence: The echo effect would occur upon reading a stories that may be fake but had an underline sale point. For example if you read a fake story about an intruder breaking into homes near you, the ads when then populate gun sales as a fix to the fake stories.

VI. Body Paragraph

A. Counterargument: The creators of this fake news are more so responsible then the consumer.

B. Rebuttal: There are many content creators and outlets on that one can recieve fake news from online, but if the reader has any media literacy then that news will not be respected

1. Evidence: In a reporting an actual fake new creator stated “Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.” (Sydell, 2016).

2. Evidence: The current state of social media and how easy it is for something to become viral it all boils down to the readers. Yes, the creator creates but with out reader/consumers they have no story.

VII. Conclusion

A. Call to action: Fake news is just like any information its up to the reader to access if the information is credible and be able to discern between the two.

B. Concluding statement: Fake news is difficult to identify with the amount of material and content provided to the consumer that is why the consumer must be one to validate and control the media. The creator is doing a job majority of the time and that producing content, what content is digested and regurgitated millions of time is the result of the consumer.

References

Aisch, G., Huang, J., & Kang, C. (2016, December 10). Dissecting the #PizzaGate conspiracy theories [Newsgroup post]. Retrieved from The New York Times website: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/10/business/media/pizzagate.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

Brown, D. (2014, June 5). How to choose your news - Damon Brown [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Y-z6HmRgI

Evaluating information: The cornerstone of civic online reasoning (Stanford History Education Group, Comp.). (2016, November). Retrieved from Stanford University website: https://sheg.stanford.edu/upload/V3LessonPlans/ Executive%20Summary%2011.21.16.pdf

Shellenbarger, S. (2016, November 21). Most students don't know when news is fake, Stanford Study finds [Newsgroup post]. Retrieved from The Wall Street Journal website: http://www.wsj.com/articles/most-students-dont-know-when-news-is-fake-stanford-study-finds-1479752576?mod=e2fb

Sydell, L. (2016, November 23). We tracked down a fake-news creator in the suburbs. Here's what we learned [Newsgroup post]. Retrieved from NPR website: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs