A. Thesis statement: Internet technologies enable the proliferation of fake news, and only education and awareness can curtail the influence fake news has on society.
II. Body Paragraph
A. Claim: Prior exposure to a fake news story makes a person more likely to believe in the veracity of the information.
1. Evidence: Just a one-time exposure to a fake news item on a social media platform like Facebook increases the likelihood that a person will believe the fake news story, with the effects lasting as long as a week (Pennycook, Cannon, & Rand, 2017)
2. Evidence: The prior exposure phenomenon is a type of confirmation bias, whereby “ We pick out those bits of data that make us feel good because they confirm our prejudices,” (Heshmat, 2015, p. 1).
3. Discussion: Fake news is sinister and difficult to curtail because even just one exposure to a fake news story can reinforce prejudicial or irrational beliefs.
III. Body Paragraph
A. Claim: Mob mentality is at work with fake news, as research shows a viral post is more likely to be perceived as trustworthy even when it is fake
1. Evidence: Becker (2016) notes that the proliferation of fake news is akin to a mob mentality, whereby people believe what they read simply because it is popular.
2. Evidence: A viral post on social media is more likely to be perceived of as true than one that can be fact-checked (Papanastasiou, 2017)
3. Discussion: Because social media algorithms also contribute to the proliferation of fake news stories, curbing the influence of fake news has become a daunting, if not totally impossible, task.
IV. Body Paragraph
A. Claim: Free speech enables the creation and dissemination of fake news, and free speech can also be the most effective weapon against fake news.
1. Evidence: Librarians are at the forefront of media literacy, and can help stop fake news (Becker, 2016).
2. Evidence: Aggressive and systematic tagging of fake news is essential because anything that is not tagged as “fake” will be perceived of as real (Pennycook & Rand, 2017).
V. Body Paragraph
A. Counterargument: It is too difficult to debunk fake news because the algorithms used in social media sites make it almost impossible to prevent content from going….....
Becker, B.W. (2016). The librarian’s information war. Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian 35(4):188-191. DOI: 10.1080/01639269.2016.1284525
Heshmat, S. (2015). What is confirmation bias? Psychology Today. 23 April, 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias
Papanastasiou, Y. (2017). Fake news propagation and detection. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3028354
Pennycook, G. & Rand, D.G. (2017). The implied truth effect. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3035384
Shao, C., Ciampaglia, G.L., Varol, O. et al (2017). The spread of misinformation by social bots. Social and Information Networks. https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07592
Verma, N., Fleischmann, K.R. & Koltai, K.S. (2017). Human values and trust in scientific journals, the mainstream media, and fake news. 80th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Washington, DC, VA | Oct. 27-Nov. 1, 2017
