Reflecting on fake news

March 10, 2019

By Sara W

Since I have worked with news and journalism I found this to be a very interesting and inspiring task. My background certainly affected how I approached the problem, but I will return to that later.

As a first step I started out by defining and narrowing the problem down. I did this by asking myself which channels are most important when it comes to spreading and publishing fake news. In my opinion it is social media, and therefore I chose to put my focus on that.

I use social media on a daily basis and also work with it to some extent. What makes social media special is that it contains so much content from a great variety of sources. It makes it difficult to determine where the information comes from and if it is credible – many times it is not even possible to identify the source behind it. That became my starting point of idea generation.

In the next step, I collected information from people around me. I asked them about their view on fake news, and what would help them determine if something they see or read is credible. Their answers gave important insights that I used in the process going forward.

I then started to share my idea, both with people in the industry and “ordinary users” (to ensure they also would benefit and use it). Many of them pointed to weaknesses and problems which gave additional insights that I used to refine my idea.

The fact that I have worked with media – and might qualify as a lead user – certainly affected my idea and approach. For example I considered challenges that “ordinary users” may have discarded, for example: how can one maintain the credibility of the media in the world of fake news? And how can one build a system that also benefits publishers and news outlets?

But the fact that this is a challenge was “close to home” also inspired me and made me feel enthusiastic about the work.

One response to “Reflecting on fake news

Comments are closed.