MJ1313 Assignment 2
- FOO MING LI
- Jul 14, 2019
- 5 min read
Introduction
We are differentiating the spreading of fake news on the internet. We will study about two different cases of fake news going viral that happened both in and outside Malaysia. The verification of these fake news will be analysed by applying via and differentiating the information neighbourhood grid. The targeted community are students and the 2 case studies that we will be looking at will be about the misinterpretation of deputy minister of education Teo Nie Ching talking about the incident and the incident of an image of the female breast anatomy that went viral on Twitter.
Case Study 1
The first case study is about the spreading of fake news regarding Teo Nie Ching commenting about the incident of a student scolding her teacher as “Ah Gua”, causing her to be canned and reporting to the police. Referring to Picture 1, an online media Johorisme posted an article with the title “Kalau Pelajar Jerit ‘Cikgu Bodoh’, Tolonglah Jawab Sambil Senyum, “Ya, Saya Bodoh & Pondan” (If students mock the teacher as “Ah Gua”, teacher should answer yes, I am stupid with a smile). This article posted on the FB page in Johorisme attracted 67 comments, 212 shares and 212 likes which can be seen on Picture 2. However, the article did not include any content that is relatable to the title.
We also found out that this article is copied from an article which belongs to VitMedia, another online news media with the attached image labelled as Picture 3 and Picture 4. We have copied the first few paragraphs of the article on Johorisme and the first search in Google shows this article. The title for this article is “Guru Tak Sepatutnya Rotan Pelajar Perempuan” (Teacher Should Not Can Student) which is different from the sensational article in Johorisme. The author for this article is also listed written by Farizan Zainal, which is different from the article in Johorisme which did not list out the author. We also right clicked the pictures used by the article which turns up one of the pictures of Teo Nie Ching which was used during an interview of her with Malay Mail.
Based on the neighbourhood grid, this case study falls under propaganda. The misleading part of the news tend to create an image that Teo Nie Ching does not care about the teacher but prioritises the student. This is to create the urge for readers or followers of the page to comment and interact below the news by manipulating their emotions with a controvertive title.
In addition, the article from Johorisme is considered as junk journalism. This is because Johorisme has spread inaccurate information by their creation without verification. They have gone against the rules of news to inform readers the truth by creating unreliable information to stimulate readers’ reaction for the traffic of the website.
Case Study 2
Another case study of fake news is the image of the female breast anatomy that went viral on Twitter. It was first tweeted on April 21, 2019 by @lemonadead which received more than 135,000 likes and retweeted more than 43,000 times in a few days. On April 26, 2019, News Zealand news organisation Newshub along other news organisations such as BBC News, The Independent, and Express published an article of the viral image stating the image may be beautiful to some users while others find it terrifying and traumatic. Moreover, Newshub also took a few tweets from a few Twitter users and quote it in the article
However, the image was found out to be false as it is a screenshot of an anatomy from the Apple App Store from 2016. Newshub did publish an article addressing this fake news based on an article from Signe Dean, a writer from ScienceAlert wrote an article of the viral image to debunk the false female breast anatomy. Dean wrote the article thoroughly explaining the cells and muscle of the female breast functions accompanied with various images to make the readers better understand about female breast anatomy.
To verify the news story, readers can google search for the news article from other news organisation to verify the viral image is a true representation of the female breast anatomy. Moreover, readers who are reading the article on their computers can right-click search for google image on the image of the female breast anatomy to check the original source of the image or validate the image to see if other news organisation is using the same image in their article.
Based on the neighbourhood grid, this case study falls under raw information as it went viral on Twitter initially and it caught the attention of the media a few days later. The viral image of the female breast anatomy went viral because the image has no verification of the true representation of the female anatomy and it can easily be tweeted by a user who has Internet access to inform others without the validation of the media.
In addition, the article from Newshub on the viral image can be considered as junk journalism as the article does not have any professional interviewee from the science and medical field to verify the facts, and the article is also written based on the tweets found circulating in Twitter. Newshub may have written the article in short amount of time because of the quotes used in the article are from user’s tweet which can be easily found as the image was very popular among users on Twitter.
Activity for Han Chiang College Students
We have planned an activity for the students to read a genuine article with eye-catching headline from reliable and credible news organisation mainly BBC News and The Star Newspaper to let the students change the headline or the content of the article, and add some quotes to sensationalise the news article to make it more believable.
The students are put into a group of three members, each team will get three copies of the same article to discuss among themselves on how do they can turn the story into fake news by altering some information in the article. This includes a clickbait headline, altering quotes, and additional information. After making changes to the article, the group presents their altered news article on why they made the changes on the headline and the content of the genuine article to gain people’s attention on reading and sharing fake news.
Reflection
After conducting the activity, students learnt to know how do fake news are produced based on the genuine news article given to them and the students also learnt how to identify fake news.
Based on the response from the students, they understand the activity after explaining and showing an example of a fake news we altered on an article about flying cars in Malaysia. The students used the fake news example to change the genuine news given to them.
We noticed there are some students took some time to alter the genuine news as one of the news from BBC News given to one of the groups is a long feature story, and another group encounter some problem mainly on language aspect due to they have to translate their ideas from Mandarin to English.
There is an improvement can be made towards the activity on choosing an article with appropriate length which the students can read the article without spending too much time. Moreover, the articles we have chosen can be less serious as the articles we given to the student are hard news or serious topic. To improve on this issue, we can find some entertainment articles or other news which are more light-hearted with questionable headline.
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