Fake news starts and stops with us

Sunday in Johannesburg was noteworthy for a number of reasons: the Jacarandas put on a display that was truly remarkable, a massive storm hit Gauteng, and the lights went out for many hours across the city.

The combination of the weather and the power outage was unsettling, which is why during this time I was perplexed to receive a communication, allegedly from the Democratic Alliance (DA), titled “Dark Days In Joburg”, informing me that there were no maintenance crews available and that for the foreseeable future, there wouldn’t be.

The implication was clear that city residents were unlikely to see electricity in our parts ever again. And yet the lights came on a few hours later and life returned to normal. I’m still unclear if this was a legitimate document in the poorest of taste, or if it was fake news.

In December 2016, just before the last United States elections, the term “fake news” was used in a Buzzfeed article reporting on websites that were publishing false (and mostly) pro-Trump articles that were shared a lot on social media. Only four days later, Donald Trump picked up the term and started to use it to label certain news reporting. It’s his use of the term that brought it popularity.

In 2017, dictionary publisher Collins named “fake news” the word of the year. The dictionary defined fake news as “false, often sensational information disseminated under the guise of news”. Since its invention, it has been used and abused to an extent that it stopped meaning much.

But it does mean a lot, and it always has.

On a webinar I participated in soon after the lights returned, I tried to assist participants in identifying some of the threads that remain common to all fake news stories. The obvious ones remain political or financial gain, but I explained further that we are more likely to believe fake stories that resonate with our belief systems and that reinforce our way of thinking. Because social media algorithms are designed to show us what we want to read, we are all at risk in this regard.

But there’s another component common to many fake news stories, and that’s the fear factor. For example, when we receive a message that there will be protests and riots in an area, or that a storm to end all storms is coming. What about the message that if someone throws egg on your windscreen, something will happen (I have never got to the end of the message), or that children are being abducted at the Mall of Somewhere and their hair colour dyed. Then, there are those that say that the hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, when they are not, and that the president is going to take single malt whisky away from us again. These stories spread because they make us afraid. These are the stories that unnerve us because fear is one of our strongest emotions.

And let’s be honest, we didn’t survive the holocaust in order to die from single malt deprivation.

We have all forwarded messages that we shouldn’t have. We do it because we are worried and because we are decent people and want others to know. Mostly.

But we need to learn from the DA document. If it was legitimate, then it was poorly timed and politically expedient. Even if it was fake, we had the power to stop it. It starts with us, and that’s where it can end. If we try.