TikTok and other websites for short videos are becoming more and more popular as news sources. This will help you stay vigilant and identify false information. TikTok is now the principal news source for 20% of 18 to 20-year-olds, an increase of 5% from the previous year, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s Digital News Report for this year.
Since consumers can receive news via social media from any technological device, typically for free, print journalism has lost a lot of ground. The Digital News Report demonstrates that digital media still needs to fill the void despite declining television and print journalism markets.
On TikTok, users are more interested in breaking news from social media personalities, celebrities, and influencers than journalists. However, the general public needs to become more interested in the report, linked to a lack of faith in the media, confidence in social media algorithms, and a desire to steer clear of bad news stories.
Users of TikTok prefer citizen journalism (44%) to that produced by major news organisations or professional journalists (33%). Citizens gather information about a news event and make it public through citizen journalism. During the Russo-Ukrainian War, it became more well-known due to soldiers uploading their videos and battle journals on TikTok. People who engage in participatory journalism on TikTok may get the impression that someone witnessing an event personally is accurately reporting it, including details that more established journalists might overlook. However, authorities caution that citizen journalism on short-video platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram may easily muddle fact from fiction, confusing information and misinformation. Nearly 20% of the top news videos in the world, according to a NewsGuard poll, featured incorrect content. The themes covered anything from COVID vaccinations and gun violence to the US and the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Thanks to Photoshop, AI-powered deep fakes, and highly prominent figureheads, misinformation can spread via short video platforms. It can be incredibly challenging and time-consuming to double-check and re-research every image and video you encounter on TikTok to ensure the material is accurate. So, here is some advice to remember.
Advice for avoiding false information on TikTok:
- Examine your biases: To combat false information, experts advise assessing your bias: Does the information here make you feel more positively towards a particular group of people? Content’s potential to arouse an emotional response in you may impact your capacity to think logically. Additionally, you can look at the account that published the data. Is your account currently? Has he got a small group of followers? Does the version publish debatable content? You should take any material you read from this creator with a grain of salt if the answer to these questions is yes.
- Avoid becoming angry: Rage mining and rage baiting are sometimes done online by users. This occurs when a creative knowingly publishes content that irritates readers or viewers. Anger is like the saying, “Any publicity is good publicity.” Even if someone’s content offends people, it still generates discussion, views, and financial gain for the author. It’s probably attention-grabbing fury bait if you visit someone’s website and all you find is really unpleasant or even somewhat annoying material. To ensure that their content is removed from your feed, you can suspend their account.
- Verify the information with a trustworthy source: Even if you rarely use Internet news sources, it could be worthwhile to do so if you come across material that raises questions in your mind. To confirm if a certain event or occurrence occurred, see if it is mentioned in other news sources. Choose the news sources you believe in since bias exists in practically all primary news sources, but you want to avoid hidden biases. Hidden prejudice-free messages don’t use emotional language, make unsupported assertions, express personal viewpoints, or use illogical reasoning.
If you want to avoid reading information with an implicit bias, look into various sources that present several points of view before making any judgements. Popular internet news sources can be rated on a five-point political scale using AllSides, a company that employs volunteer editors. The public decides the ratings and frequently varies in response to ongoing editorial coverage of the release.
