By: From the desk of The Journal Editorial Team
As more accessible and innovative means of technological communication and research become better developed and implemented into mainstream use, it can be easy to get caught in the vices of factual inaccuracy.
“If it’s on the Internet, it must be true” is a sarcastic saying that has somehow found its way into the minds of individuals that are seemingly more willing to accept a claim as fact if it is placed in the foreground of a picture featuring a well-known political figure or a celebrity.
For example, in the past few weeks, a picture of a decades-younger Donald Trump has made the rounds on social media with a quote that makes the attention-seeker seem even more flamboyantly outspoken than he already is.
The quote is claimed to have been sourced from a 1998 interview in People magazine, and says, “If I were to run [for President], I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.”
While the quote fulfilled its intended goal of stirring the liberal pot and further fueling their disdain for Trump, the fact remains that the quote is entirely made up. Trump never said anything of the sort during his interview with People magazine almost two decades ago.
Such pictures and quotes can be powerful tools for furthering political ideology, especially on social media sites like Facebook where people can press the “share” button and spread the message in a matter of seconds, or on Twitter where the retweet option has turned into an almost subconscious reaction.
This can become a very slippery slope as more and more people share these ignorant/factually inaccurate posts to validate their existing biases; they accept statements as truth when said statements further their own ingrained beliefs without fact-checking them for accuracy.
It does not matter if we agree with a statement or not; the focus of our efforts should be to fact-check everything we see on the Internet.
In a digital age where it is incredibly easy to create and send messages through multiple mediums of communication, we need to be especially cautious when we take someone’s word on a given subject.
Besides, what does it say about our own ideology if it is founded on falsified statements and inaccurate claims?
It says that we are easy.
It says that as a society and as a community, we have drifted from searching for the best information available, to simply searching for the information that suits our needs for the situation.
There is a term used in psychology that perfectly describes this trend: confirmation bias.
Simply put, confirmation bias is the tendency for people to recall or prefer information that supports their viewpoint, and to discount or pay less attention to information that doesn’t.
Confirmation bias, combined with an out-of-control attitude towards compromise has created a wealth of misleading memes, blurbs, and faux inspirational fodder on both sides of the aisle.
In our fast-paced world, surrounded by the incessant want (or need) to instantly share our views with the world, it is imperative to check the facts before the share button comes into play.
After all, your “real world” views are more important than the views you typed up for your last paper, so why use less rigorous standards when analyzing your “real world” sources?
Where is the information coming from?
With the prevalence of background organizations like Super PACs in the American political process, memes and blurbs are often originally shared through profiles linked to shadow organizations.
Try to find out who initially made the post and understand that all organizations are only going to cultivate content that supports their candidate or their viewpoints. This is not dissimilar to researching the background of an author on an academic source.
If the author of a research paper conducted the vast majority of their research at a private, mainly religious college, their findings will naturally be influenced by their surroundings, and must be viewed in that context. It is no different for social media sources.
Can the quote be verified?
A cursory Google search of the terms “Donald Trump” and “People Magazine Interview” revealed that the Donald Trump meme was not an actual quote. The search pulled up the original article, in addition to several news stories about how it had already been discovered to be a false attribution.
The internet is forever, and in most cases (especially when dealing with recent quotes), the original source is easy to find.
That doesn’t mean you will be able to find the appropriate sourcing all the time, but obvious mistakes like the Trump incident will become immediately apparent.
Does it really need to be meme?
Recently, the Internet’s intention for creating memes has shifted to sharing shortened version of more detailed communication. In the beginning, however, memes were mostly limited to inconsequential communications like jokes, and pithy inspirational quotes.
Shouldn’t we be striving to take the memes out of the political sphere (unless it’s a well crafted joke)? Shouldn’t we hope that our political views are more impressive and complicated than two sentences?
Memes simply provide another way for us to further chunk up our politics into sound bites, but the sound bite culture removes any sense of context, background, or viability. It cheapens our incredibly complex system of democracy, and it makes it entirely to easy to polarize our fellow citizens.
So the next time a Donald Trump or politically related meme spreads across the internet, take into account the context and credibility.
The trend towards immediate assumption of internet truths into our personal viewpoints is dangerous. Never take something as a fact, or share your support, without assessing the evidence first.
