Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media
Vol. 3, 01 March 2023
Open
Access | Article
Analysis on the Effects of Misinformation: Taking Facebook as an Example
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Abstract
Nowadays, misinformation is widely spread on the Internet. It affects people's minds, defining what they think. Social media platforms such as Facebook started working on solutions, but they have not defeated the issues yet. The following content of this paper analyzes the effects of misinformation in detail, suggesting some possible ways to improve public consciousness. It applies the Two-Step Flow Theory of Communication and Agenda Setting Theory to the current issues on Facebook, empathizing the need to address them properly. The research conducted showed that misinformation is especially harmful to information society, in which information is significant for economic, political, and cultural activity. It misleads inadvertently, diminishing the role of truth in reality and the Internet. The application of the Two-Step Flow Theory of Communication and Agenda Setting Theory revealed that social media now determines the social agenda, with bloggers and influences perceived as more credible news informers for people than average news reportages. To address the effects of misinformation, either Facebook or the US government or the US population itself should equally contribute to fighting against misinformation by spreading awareness of the problem in the country. They should organize more initiatives promoting people's immunity to misinformation on the Internet. Only spreading awareness of the problem could help individuals critically evaluate every post they see and remain true to their personal opinions and minds.
Keywords
Misinformation, Agenda Setting Theory, information society, Facebook., Two-Step Flow Theory of Communication
References
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Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Educational Innovation and Philosophical Inquiries (ICEIPI 2022), Part II
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-915371-09-6
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-915371-10-2
- Published Date
- 01 March 2023
- Series
- Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7048
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7056
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7048/3/2022465
- Copyright
- 01 March 2023
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited