The topic of fake news has been a rather controversial topic these past years. This is partially due to the recent presidential election. The election brought up a lot of articles that had no truth value, but people would believe it anyways. Why would this be? Due to the fact that it's what they want to believe. If it helps their point they are trying to make then they will believe it and use it against others.
Much fake news is written with many logical fallacies connected to them. A logical fallacy as defined by Purdue OWL "is common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument". The 3 common fallacies are Ad hominem, the attacking of a person rather than their argument, hasty evidence, making your own conclusion based on bias opinion, and genetic fallacy, where a person or idea's origins define what it is. Fallacies show up in arguments to make it seem believable to the point that it influences others to believe it.
Many journalists believe that during this presidential election ad hominem was overused. Each candidate attacked the other in whatever way possible in order to win the presidency. This election has shown a high in politic awareness. Even though the cause of this awareness is due to the fake articles and headline that people have read.
Logical fallacies have been apart of news posts since the printing press was invented. It has increasingly become more of a problem while being connected to fake news, and has started to turn people against each other. It has caused the loss of friends and family around the world.
I think you might be on to something here. People might not question a news article because it's arguing something in that person's wheelhouse; that is, they agree with the sentiment, so the person doesn't question the logic of the argument that's constructed to get from A to Z in the article itself.
ReplyDeleteAd hominem goes way beyond the presidential election. Haven't you seen it in more local elections? Can you expand by finding a unique example of the fallacy used during the election and breaking down the flaw in the argument?
So far throughout this course we as a class have discussed the correlations between last year’s US Presidential election and the sudden surge of fake news scandals and stories, so I agree with your observations in this post. If you were to expand this claim further, it might be interesting to highlight one or two specific stories where the fake news audience has been overtaken by false truths, such as the Pizzagate scandal – which lead to a shooting in North Carolina – or Donald Trump’s false claims of being illegally wiretapped by former president Barack Obama.
ReplyDeleteAnd your insight on ad hominem from the Purdue site helps your reader understand the connections you are making in this article. Perhaps if you expanded more on examples that further back up your claims, you would be able to expand these observations even further? Like, who does this impact – is it limited to one side of an argument? What are some of the consequences that these fake news stories have led to or exacerbated? And so on…