The Impact of Fake News on International Politics

Over the course of the past year and a half, American politics has been riddled with stories of misinformation and claims of fake news stories. Throughout the election cycle, many candidates were bombarded with stories from mainstream or third party news sources that were ladened with falsehoods, with the intent of interfering with a candidate’s campaign. Over in France, a similar trend is starting to form with news sites coming out of the woodwork with their own claims about French politicians in order to sway public opinion.

An example of the spread of misinformation in the French election cycle is the false story that Saudi Arabia is funding Emmanuel Macron’spresidential campaign. The story, which has gained almost 10,000 likes and shares on Facebook, was promoted by the niece of apposing candidate Marine Le Pen. The story was refuted after it was pointed out that the site it was posted on was a clone of a reputable Belgian news source, which was being used to spread false information. While the sharing of said misinformation by Le Pen’s niece may not have been intentional, thousands of people were still introduced to the article through her, and their opinion of Macron may have changed because of it.

In an effort to combat this wide spread trend of false information throughout election cycles, many news organizations are partnering together to help prevent the spread of fake news. On February 28^th 37 French and international media outlets along with Google formed “CrossCheck” a news coalition with the main idea being to help the French voting population make sense of who and whom not to trust on their social media feed. If someone sees an article or piece of news in regards to the French election and would like to know if the information they are being presented is factual or not, they are able to submit an online form.

Another source of information that is cracking down on the spread of fake news is Facebook. Facebook is launching an anti-fake newsregimen for the French election cycle similar to the one set in place for the United States election and in Germany. Under this system if two companies are able to support a claim that an article is spreading misinformation, the content will be flagged as disputed, and will give a warning to users before they share. This system they are putting in place is helpful in that, it keeps people aware of what they are sharing onto their timeline for others to see. In this day and age the information more and more people are buying into flashy and outrageous titles without fact checking the information behind those titles. With a system like this in place, more people are going to be more aware of what information they are putting forward and the credibility of said information.