Facing Fake News

  When looking at the photograph of the daises, my initial reactions were shock, disbelief, and curiousity.  After reading the article, not knowing much information I, probably like many others, believed that the flowers were deformed due to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. However, with the little information that was linked with the picture, it did not have strong enough evidence for me to believe that.  There could be a million different explanations as to why the flowers have that deformity.  Besides the actual picture of the daises (which could be any natural deformities possible) there is no reliable evidence that proves to a reader that this was caused by the Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. Personally, this just seems like an unreliable source to. Try and gather information from. After searching I came to find out that scientists suspect it is a natural flower deformity, and that this is fake news.

  After watching the videos on “Fake or Real”, I found it very interesting that there was a survey done by 8000 kids on fake news. I did not realize this was such a popular topic.  Another thing I also found very interesting was that 82% of children didn’t know this difference between Native and sponsored Content. A fun fact I learned in one of the videos was that by 18 years of age, 88% of teens get their source of news from social media’s. My favourite video would have to be the buzz feed video, mainly because I got to go along and answer some of the questions seeing if I could distinguish between real and fake news.  What I learned from that video was that fake news is really difficult to spot, and is very believable.  Mostly, I think it’s just people assuming and guessing as soon as they hear a story. All in all, I think fake news is very common, and very hard to distinguish at times, however, with the right researching and reliable sources, people can get the truth.