How does fake news spread?

Vick Hope: Emotions! We share them all day. Quite often we don’t say anything, the right emoji does the job for us. We feel. With fake news, we feel a lot. Latest research shows that only two percent of young people can spot fake news. With a bit of know-how, there’s no reason we can’t change that figure to 100 percent. Fake news deliberately plays on our emotions and it’s our strong reactions that make us want to hit the share button, understanding how this works is the first step to fighting back.

Student: All fake news is based off a feeling.

Student: It’s all about making something boring really extreme.

Student: When we share things it’s because we’ve felt an emotional connection to it.

Dr Radha Modgil: So fake news affects our emotions in two ways. It contains dramatic and emotional headlines and words to drag us in, like best, worst, terrible, exciting, they really provoke an emotional reaction and often the stories also contain the word “you”, so you feel directly affected and drawn in by the story.

Student: People do make headlines that are quite extravagant to draw people in.

Student: Everything’s got to be really dramatic and in capital letters.

Dr Radha Modgil: Then once it’s got our attention it then causes a really strong emotional reaction in us, so we feel we have to share it. There’s an area on our brain called the amygdala which actually responds to emotional drive and that becomes over-activated or has increased activity when we’re reading a fake news story. Studies have shown that actually it only takes one 250th of a second for us to react to emotional content, so basically that means that there’s no time at all for us to think, respond and critically analyse that information. Fake stories leave us at the mercy of our basic instincts.

Vick Hope: Because of the way it works on our emotions, once you share a fake story it will travel much faster and further than a real one.

Alastair Reed: Everything emotional online travels faster and whether it’s gossip or whether it’s sensational lies about someone or something, it’s much more interesting often than quite boring or complex truths so people are much more likely to share it.

Vick Hope: And the more you see fake stories the more your brain leads you to believe it’s true.

Student: I think if you see a story more than once you’re more likely to believe it than if you see it once.

Student: Because surely not this many people would be getting it wrong.

Student: Then you start believing it because you’ve just seen it more and more, and more people are starting to share it and you’re like “Oh, this must be real”.

Claire Milne: And that’s known as the Illusory Truth Effect. So that’s basically just the more you hear something repeated the more likely you are to think it’s true whether it is or whether it isn’t.

Vick Hope: And every time we like or share a fake story it acts like a big thumbs up, telling all our accounts that we want more and that’s what we get. More and more fake stories.

Student: A story that I thought was real but later found out was fake would have to be the World War Three report.

Student: Conspiracies about 9/11.

Student: The coronavirus apparently coming from bat soup.

Student: But I later found out that maybe that it wasn’t true.

Student: I kinda felt tricked. How could I believe that was true?

Student: I feel really annoyed because it’s just a waste of time.

Student: Just a bit stupid that I thought it might have been real.

Student: If you can make up a news story about something that serious then what can we really trust?

Vick Hope: None of us want to be tricked by stories or information that isn’t real or true. If you feel angry or smug, or indeed anything that gets you right in the stomach it’s worth taking a second look and asking yourself what is behind the headline? Pause before you share and think if what you’re sharing is fact or fake.