From my understanding, fake news is a type of media that is designed to deceive some casual media consumers into believing a certain viewpoint. A fake news piece is designed to emulate legitimate news sources, but contain fabricated reports. Fake news is often shared through social media, usually by private users.

In class, we spoke about using the term disinformation instead of fake news, but I believe that disinformation is better used as an umbrella term, with fake news as a specific category.

Satirical journals, such as The Onion, The Chaser, and The Betoota Advocate, would not be considered fake news by the modern definition, because their articles are not written to be interpreted as factual, through elements such as subject matter, comedic references and writing style. A journal used for disinformation would instead be written in a more serious tone with no comedic elements, which would potentially be taken ‘more seriously’ by an otherwise uninformed reader.

Misinformation is where false information is understood as real. As media literacy has only recently become a talking point with the general public, it may take a number of years to reach a point where misinformation is no longer a dangerous weapon.

I get the majority of my news from social media – usually Facebook or Reddit, like most of the people I talked to in class. I also have a few news apps on my phone that push notifications. Interestingly, from my thorough research that totally wasn’t talking to others in class, the only legacy media source that was nearly as popular was the radio.

To be honest, I have unintentionally shared fake news. It was thankfully a fairly harmless article about something non-political, though I still felt a bit embarrassed after realising that the article I shared was fictional.

By the end of the semester, I want to learn how fact checking is done professionally, and possibly even reverse-engineer the ways that disinformation and misinformation are created, to counter and destroy them.