Does Fake News Interfere with Election Outcomes?

Name:
Instructor:
Course:
Date:
Does Social Media Interfere with Election Outcomes?
Introduction
Most people around the world rely on social media platforms for information. This is true because social media has become a significant part of our lives. Some of these social media platforms include Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The emerging technological trends have swayed the people to the extent that they cannot stay for long before going online. As a result, there has been spread of fake news all over. For example, many celebrities have been killed by social media. A rumor starts spreading around, and with time, people think it is real news. Consequently, politicians can use journalists and social media platforms to spread fake news against their opponents to sway the voters. This will ultimately interfere with the election process, and the voters will be denied their democratic right. The essay discusses how fake news can interfere with the outcome of the elections.
Supportive points
Social media networks are an essential part of the information. If used for the wrong purposes, social media can become a powerful tool to spread false and biased information. A certain number of Americans and people all over the world depend on social media for election news and updates. This makes it easy to post the wrong information and mislead the people. There are those people who believe the stories posted on social media platforms favoring their preferred candidates. It is likely for people to change their minds after their candidate of choice is shamed on social media, even if it is wrong information. This is because almost everyone believes what they see on the social media pages. Also, social media has become an essential part of our lives (Miller & Douglas 229). Whenever a person needs to confirm something, they go online. Besides, it is easy for fake news to spread via WhatsApp through the status of the people, and the chat groups. Strict rules need to be enacted to make sure that people do not spread fake news. For instance, the license allowing someone to practice journalism can be revoked when they spread fake news.
Moving on, posts and tweets on social media spread fast. This makes it easy to spread fake news. For instance, false information on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter will prompt people to believe that what has been posted is real. This goes a long way in denying people their democratic right to vote in addition to making decisions for them. Also, most presidential candidates and their supporters use fake news to rally for support from the people and to misinform the people (Garvin 1). There is a lot of information spreading around about the 2016 general elections in the USA. Most people believe that Russia played a huge role in the spread of fake news on social media platforms. As a result, Trump ended up as the president of the United States of America.
During the presidential campaigns in 2016, there were fake news posts of both the presidential candidates. However, the false news favoring Trump was shared 30 million times while those for Hilary Clinton were shared 8 million times (Allcot & Gentzkow 211). It is likely that the die-hard conservatives supported Trump’s presidential bid and they were responsible for most of the fake news spread on Twitter. Investigations had been carried out by Congress and the FBI to determine whether fake news caused Trump to win the elections. The results show that the spread of fake news was aimed for that purpose. This means that the election was legit and people voted for their candidate, though most of them were influenced by fake news.
Another country that is used to fake news is Nigeria. There was a documentary about Buhari that was aired on television before doing rounds on social media in the 2015 elections. Most of the information in the literature was wrong. The spread of fake news has become a common trend as fake news about the current president Buhari and the former vice president Atiku, who is his opponent, is being spread on Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp (Busari 1). The campaign officials are in charge of spreading the fake news to the unsuspecting voters. The false information is incriminating both political figures. For example, there is news that Atiku avoided being arrested during his visit to America because of his diplomatic immunity. Also, it is said that Kim Jong Un wants to take control of Nigeria and recolonize it. All this is fake news. The spread of false information has created tension in the country (Guo&Vargo 559). This is because people do not know what to believe and what to ignore. The false information is spre...