Fake News in Catalonia
Chapter 6 talks about the role that the news media play in our society. There’s no denying that the media has a great impact on our lives. Nevertheless, there is a continuous shift towards the social networking sites that are progressively replacing the conventional ways of delivering the news. Twitter and Facebook are the two main online platforms on which news are delivered nowadays and those have a great influence on the younger segment of the population, which are the most frequent users of them and therefore the most likely to get influenced by their content.
During the last years, it has been very common to find news on those platforms that turned out to be fake. The problem is not only for those who publish the information but also for those who diffuse it without contrasting its veracity. Normally, the closer we are to the election the more fake news appear. This is clearly to destabilize the voters and shape their preferences according to the news that is published. As an example of that, we have the 2016 election, with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Whether or not the fake news that we published had a great impact on the outcome is something that cannot be exactly determined, but what it’s true is that there is a part of the population that is more deemed to believe those kinds of news and that is reluctant to accept that they are false when those are denied.
There is also a recent example of fake news in Catalonia. During the period before the election, which took place last December 21 as a result of the Spanish government’s takeover. There were many users especially on Twitter and Facebook that said that the result of the election would be intentionally modified and therefore this result would be fake and inaccurate because the Spanish government wanted to modify the result so as to end up with independence movements. After the victory of the political parties in favor of independence, it was evident that that news was not true.
Mr. Artur Mas I Gavarró, former president of Catalonia was also a victim of this phenomenon. Days before the election back in 2012 a Spanish newspaper published that he was involved in a corruption case. Many people believed it because his party was already involved in some corruption cases which made the whole situation more likely to be considered as true. He won the election but lost votes with respect to the previous outcome. The information was proved to be wrong but the newspaper never said sorry for it.
Lastly, another interesting case was the one faced by Mr. Xavier Trias, former mayor of Barcelona. He was accused of having a bank account in Switzerland with undeclared money just days before the election as a mayor affecting his reputation and integrity. The information was proved to be false but no apologies were made either.
All in all, the way news media delivers news and the content of that news are some of the most important things to take into account as they can affect the way society perceives reality. Legislation must be made in order to condemn the usage of fake information and thus potential victims must be protected against the intrusion of honor and reputation that this may have. In addition to that, online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter must work hard to filter the content they display so that they can eliminate content that is deemed to be considered as fake news.
SOURCES:
https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/12/15/inenglish/1513327885_145203.html
https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2012/11/22/actualidad/1353616725_705247.html