[Music] it was just a normal day on December 2nd 2016 at Comic ping-pong in Washington DC now take a minute to imagine what it must be like in a place where you're trying to be in the next Forrest Gump and eat a lot of pizza so that means you got probably a lot of hipsters and probably a few too many people who could use extra employment but all that changed when 28 year old edgar welch walked in and fires ar-15 two times into the air now thankfully no one was injured and the police quickly subdued him but there's a problem what was Welch doing there because it became clear after being interrogated by police that he was not there to commit a mass shooting or even to injure a patron no Edgar Welch was there for two reasons and they go down to two words fake news and not just any fake news story but one gun that goes by the name of pizza gate now no unfortunately I know what you're thinking this was not some super awesome tailgate when they handed out free pizza this was actually a fake news story that was started on Twitter and that claimed that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had tried to run a child sex trafficking ring out of Comet ping-pong and Edgar Walsh was there to confront the owners over this story now before issues like the 2014 Ebola crisis and the 2016 presidential election many of us may have just raised their hands and said this guy's crazy but after those crises and many more we no longer have the ability to do that because the story of edgar welch is just one little piece in a much larger puzzle that's confounding everyone from social media giants and traditional news outlets to even democratic governments and its citizens that is what is fake news why is it spreading so fast and why does it keep popping up in conflicts all over the globe well in addition to answering those questions I'm going to make one additional claim that I hope that you'll find to actually be true that is our predetermined political beliefs and our values can cause us all to fall prey to fake news regardless of our party affiliation but good news for you we actually have ways to fight back so that way we never have to suffer this in the 2020 election or future medical scares so starting off we've all heard the term but let's actually define it what is fake news well according to the Journal of informal logic they state that it is the typical presentation of false or misleading information where such information is sent out by design now the words authentic and deliberate or key here because let's look at an example a place I love to go for some great he laughs that is the onion now the onion is the satirical news site that uses satire and humor to try and roast politicians but it is not seeking to be authentic news therefore it allows us today to focus on social media posts information and other messages that do try and help the audience to be fooled by both authentic information and through a deliberate design which brings us to our first real question that is just how did we get here with fake news well unfortunately the reason is essentially because we'd like to gossip like teenagers and it is spread so fast and is believed by so many because it preys on three of our most basic psychological predispositions experience fear and humor according to communication professor Shawn Westwood he outlines in a recent study that when presented with fake news we are significantly more likely to believe it if we agree with the information being presented and dr. Westwood outlined that this held true even when little or no evidence was presented within the article and this helps to explain why two of the most famous and well-known headlines from the 2016 election had the following fake news titles Donald Trump in 1998 if I were to run for president it would be as a Republican because they have the dumbest group of voters and it's over Hillary's Isis email just linked and it's worse than anyone could have imagined pretty subtle right pretty subtle headlines and here's the thing all this information this data tends to support what I call the reassuring association effect that is we feel better about information we believe or opinions we hold if our opposition is portrayed in such an illogical or emotional manner think of it essentially as a psychological version of saying whew thank God would not an idiot like that person when in reality data actually might be the idiot additionally according to dr. Daniel Jung a communication in psych psychology expert she had an interesting study that talked about how fear and humor plays such an important role it has to do with our brain because according to dr.
Young's research we have a finite capacity to store process and recall information therefore it forces us to be able to use context clues and other emotional situations to help in that encoding and decoding process the two emotional cues that dr. Jung found to be most successful in the study of fake news fear and humor and this helps to explain why the second most shared fake news title of the 2016 election was this WikiLeaks confirms Hillary sold weapons to Isis then drops another bombshell these normal run-of-the-mill headlines right you can't tell these at all but here's the thing this research and these titles help to shed light on a truly harrowing statistic according to research done of the top 20 most shared fake news articles and the top 20 most shared real news articles the researchers found that the top 20 fake news articles had been shared commented and liked on Facebook 1.
