Would you get advice about a Pandemic from an Instagram live? Would you believe that Coronavirus is caused by 5G mobile phone masts? No? Well there are people who do—and that’s the issue with fake news in the time of all this uncertainty and fear.
Actors, celebrities, and influencers have hundreds of thousands—even millions—of followers; the very same followers who go to these platforms for fashion and lifestyle inspiration are going there for updates on COVID-19.
This is obviously problematic; you can’t earn a medical degree by the millions of followers on Instagram or Facebook, but that is very easy to forget when celebrities ACT like they have the correct information.
Thus has begun the spread of fake news in the age of the Coronavirus. Celebrities Woody Harrelson and MIA faced pushback when they posted about a supposed link between the spread of corona virus and 5G. This is baseless, but when disseminated by a popular source, people don’t question it.
It’s one of the problems of getting our news off of social media; obviously, due to rights protected by the First Amendment, people can say whatever they want on their personal pages. While this is a protected and valued freedom, it means that we as consumers have to guard ourselves against opinions or misinformation being branded as fact.
News sources are struggling to combat the trust that has already been established when someone has been following their favorite celebrity for years and then they post information about Coronavirus; it’s like taking advice from a friend.
We gotta learn who our friends are, though. For right now, let’s count on the news networks, not the latest on our Instagram feeds.
For more on the subject, check out this article on The Guardian.
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