#10 - Outside Reading 4 - Beyond Fake News

 I read a book about misinformation entitled, “Beyond Fake News” by Justin McBrayer. It dove into various topics about misinformation from its growth and spread to its effects and pervasive nature. In one of the chapters, McBrayer wrote about how news sources have incentives that rank higher on their list than sharing what is true. Their incentives for money which is gained only through selling peoples’ attention to advertisers is one such incentive. In order to hold peoples’ attention, they do any number of things. One thing that is common is to take a relatively unimportant piece of news and weave a very compelling narrative around it. People are easily sucked into stories, while plain information is not as enticing. This allows news sources to weave partially true tales that are enjoyable for readers and cause them to engage with them. Oftentimes engagement with narratives causes more important news to be less popular, and thus put forward less. Interesting how humans’ connection to stories can actually get them into  trouble and believe falsehoods when stories also function so well at communicating deep truths. 


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