Thoughts on Nate Pressner’s Fake News TED Talk

Nate Pressner talks about how fake news can influence our opinions and believes. I agree with how Nate expresses that instead of news being the product, our attention became the product in the form of views, clicks, and likes. This is a sad case in today’s world of the journalism business. He also mentions that youth today are increasingly getting their information from non-news sources. I agree with this statement because social media, especially, who we chose to follow or exposed ourselves with are indirectly manipulating our thoughts and behaviours. Therefore, we need to be aware of what we consume in the digital world and recognise which source is not a news source. Youngsters often fall into the trap of consuming a lot of entertainment sources instead of validated information sources when getting their news. According to a study by Leeder, willingness to share news stories does not correlate with the trustworthiness evaluations and accuracy of identifications. Hence, the possibility of spreading fake news is higher as long as it is entertaining to the viewer’s eye.