Outline of a Critical Analysis Essay, Essays (high school) of English

Download Outline of a Critical Analysis Essay and more Essays (high school) English in PDF only on Docsity! Outline of a Critical Analysis Essay Working Title: Fake News and Fabulists: Is Social Media Enabling Liars? Thesis Statement: Is the Internet enabling a grifting epidemic via information and connection? “Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.” — Benjamin Franklin. As we know, perception is everything, especially in the world of social media. We all have an ideal self in terms of perception. We all want to maximize our careers, our profession and aspire to be the ones we find the most successful. As social media continues to evolve, the idea of presenting the ideal self-versus our real self has become increasingly prevalent on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn. People are less likely to critically evaluate the news shared by their friends, so misleading news stories end up having a lot of momentum spread across social networks. Most social media contributors are likely to communicate their messages to the best of their knowledge, skills, and understanding of the situation at hand. Their messages are primarily consistent with their own beliefs. Social media streams are awash with bias, unreliable, unverified subjective messages, as well as ads and solicitations. Most social media consumers are generally aware of social media streams' subjective nature and the typical promotional intentions of attracting online traffic and revenue. What is rarer is the realization that there are instances of posts, tweets, links, and so on designed to create false impressions or conclusions. Creating misconceptions in social media consumers' minds can be achieved by disseminating false lies, false news, rumors, or hoaxes, especially when the message appears to come from an "a friend" or another group member. Spam and phishing attacks in email messages are more recognizable now that most users have experience receiving and filtering email messages. Simultaneously, information manipulation via social media is still poorly understood and rarely in the minds of users. Malevolent intentions manifest themselves in interpersonal deception and can be harmful in person-to-person communication. As the overall media landscape has changed, there have been several ominous developments. Rather than using digital tools to inform people and enhance civic discussion, some individuals have used social and digital platforms to deceive, mislead, or harm others by creating or disseminating false news and disinformation. As we engage more frequently in social media, we find ourselves sifting through children's photographs, food posts, and explosive reactions to current political events. Does this increase in media usage and exposure raise the question: how accurate is the information we're getting? More specifically, how honest are people at social media sites? Social media users often take a prevailing hypothesis of goodwill in social media information. For occurrence, Twitter users "are poor judges of efficiency based on content alone, and instead are controlled by heuristics such as username when creating probability evaluations." Some social media users may forfeit discretion for the sake of satisfaction, which may occur in them being defenseless to those who aim to deceive by propagating false news or deceptions to alter users' decision making and patterns of response beyond incentivizing to acquire via preferred advocacy (Morris et al., 2012). Liars are distinguished by their words – not by what they say but by how they say it. There have been efforts to assemble, test, and cluster predictive cues for misleading information to decipher those findings into text analytic tools for exposing lies, originally in longer forms of Computer-Mediated Communication such as e-mail (Newman et al., 2003). Therefore, it is crucial to remember that what you see is not an accurate picture of reality when you engage with social media. Don't compare yourself with the images of friends, colleagues, or celebrities. Remember that this is just a snapshot of their life— and one that they want you to see. The harsh truth is this: most of us are now using some form of social media. What people post on social media is not an accurate depiction of their lives or who they are; it may be gross lies. This absurd depiction drives younger people to think that they are inadequate; it alienates them and urges them to strive for something unattainable. It is necessary to educate and warn younger audiences about social media, the central stage of deception. Deception is a deliberate tactic that seeks to mislead others. At the same time, recipients are not made aware or expect that such action is taking place and that the objective of the receiver is to transfer that false belief to the deceived. Ref: Morris et al. (2012) Tweeting is believing? understanding microblog credibility perceptions? Retrieved from: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2145204.2145274 Ref. Newman et al. (2003) Lying Words: Predicting Deception from Linguistic Styles. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8436708_Lying_Words_Predicting_Deception _from_Linguistic_Styles Fake news on current social or political issues circulates on social media at a rapid pace. These fake stories or falsifications – intentionally or not – misinform or deceive the audience. Usually, these stories are formed to either influence people's perceptions, push the policy objectives, lead to confusion, and sometimes be viable to online publishers. Fake news stories may mislead people since their sources mainly use names and web addresses similar to reputable news organizations. There are also instances where fake news is produced by mistake, but it could also confuse and mislead audiences. Simultaneously, many people consume news and are informed