Reflection on Social Media Case 3: Tom Petty’s “Death” and Death

This case study with Tom Petty is a perfect example of why you should not believe everything you see on social media. Fake news is a real thing and it misleads people in the wrong direction. Fake news has always been around but I feel it has taken off and become even more popular once social media arrived. With this study, it is talking about how Tom Petty had died before he really did based off of the LAPD report. Later TMZ came out with the real report saying that Tom Petty is still alive although he is in cardiac arrest and in the hospital. Also, his daughter posted on her Instagram giving an update of his condition and then posted the incident of when he actually did die. Today you hear about the most fake news being reported with the president. In the article linked, written by Denise Clifton, she elaborates on how Trump supporters spread the most fake news throughout social media https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/02/trump-supporters-spread-the-majority-of-phony-news-on-social-media/. This is the negative side of social media and anybody can post anything and it eventually leads people to believe false accusations and not know the actual truth. Which is why Donald Trump does a good job of clarifying everything through twitter, where the fake news is reported, to let the audience know directly from himself what is going on and what the truth really is.

Social media today really is what most generations revolve around because it is easy to stay updated with information that you like. On social media you get to follow who you want but that does not mean that it is credible and you can believe whatever they are saying. In the article linked by Natalie Stroud, it talks about how/what people think of something when they get the news from social media https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/research-review/social-media-reporting-credibility/. Fake news is supposed to catch your attention because it’s usually something you didn’t think would happen and it makes it very one sided. Its not fair to the people who are reading the fake news and I hope that once people realize it is fake they start to report accounts that are posting fake news to eliminate this from continuing to happen.