This week’s reading Defining ‘Fake News’ by Edson C. Tandoc Jr., Zheng Wei Lim and Richard Ling, detailed the basics of ‘fake news’ with this including what can be considered as ‘fake news’. It surprised me to read that there can be advertising and public relations related ‘fake news’. The example of advertising as ‘fake news’ we watched in class featured a cheap flights segment on a morning breakfast show which was largely an advertisement for Jetstar. Prior to this class I never would have considered this to be ‘fake news’, I would have just consumed the segment and gone onto the Jetstar website as if it were on my own accord. Yet realistically this was a shameless advertisement that the morning show was highly likely paid to include, and is most likely false information as there are definitely cheaper airlines than Jetstar. ‘News is also a unique commodity, for while it is sold to audiences, news audiences are subsequently sold to advertisers, making it vulnerable to market forces. (McManus, 1992.) Even newspapers can provide advertisements that appear to be news. Television show reviews appear like news but are in actuality paid posts, with banners at the top of the article and disclaimers stating no news or editorial staff were involved in the creation of the article (Deziel 2014).

Something else I had never considered that would go under the umbrella of ‘fake news’ is click bait. Previously I had only ever considered click bait to be a phenomenon on YouTube within the lifestyle, fashion and beauty channel community. Many YouTubers often title their videos with exciting lies in order to get views yet I wasn’t overly aware click bait flooded into more political content. Misleading articles on Facebook and edited YouTube videos are becoming increasingly more common and they often create a lot of anger and frustration amongst readers due to the alleged news never actually occurring or being far less dramatic than what the article/video headline suggests (Tandoc, Lim and Ling 2017 p. 146.)

References

Edson C. Tandoc Jr., Zheng Wei Lim and Richard Ling 2017, ‘Defining ‘Fake News’’, Digital Journalism, vol. 6, no. 2, pp.137-155