The static image looked so real, and I shared it. In fact, as someone who keeps updated on the news, I was shocked that I hadn’t already heard about this amazing goodwill gesture: people throwing supplies into the sea in an effort to reach Gaza. It looked like such an incredible feat of empathetic humanity that I wanted to believe. I hovered over the blurry image for a moment, making sure everyone had the right amount of human fingers before I shared it to my Instagram Stories, without comment.
Not five minutes later, I received a DM from a friend: “The stories of humans stepping in as governments keep failing have been inspiring. But afraid this one isn’t true.”
A deeper Google search confirmed their message. I had been duped.
The embarrassment was palpable. After all, I am trained in identifying misinformation, and quickly corrected. But I was so thrown that I paused to understand what it was about this image that got me. The way I had gotten fooled could happen to anyone.
Here’s what led me to believe it was real news:
- Two reporter friends shared this image. A share from someone we deem trustworthy goes a long way in helping us identify if something is true or not. When making short-term decisions, such as whether or not to click on an Instagram post, a signal from a friend may be all we need to believe the information in front of us. If the friends tend to lean towards the same things we believe, we fall into confirmation bias.
- The image was from a source who had a design similar to popular newspapers. With so many journalists and creators building independent news accounts, I’m making an effort to find new perspectives in new places. And this account, seemingly an independent news brand out of Africa, looked like a new, professional news source. As someone who has run news social media accounts, my eyes were drawn to design elements that were “consistent with [my] established points of view,” an established tactic noted by Dr. Emanuel Maidenberg.
- The speed of information is too rapid to keep up with. When news flows so quickly that we’re unable to pause, any story that enters the information ecosystem can get swept up into fact. When the horrors are beyond the scope of what we can imagine, anything can appear true, and anxiety increases your likelihood of believing.
- I found similar videos on news pages and even Grok, Twitter’s AI tool, claimed the image was true. Repeated information confirms validity. However, the image I shared was AI generated, piecing together clips from real scenarios, recycled with new headlines. Similar footage creates a confusing situation that encourages us to believe the image is real.
Looking back, it makes total sense why I would fall for this misinformation: it was designed that way. This can happen to anyone, and will.
News Creator Corps’ mission is to ensure everyone has access to accurate and trustworthy information, and I hope we can start to combat this purposeful misinfo by making more people aware of the red flags. We can’t leave it up to legacy media or platforms to find these posts and take them down before it causes damage. But, when more of us know what to look for, we can share those learnings with our own communities and take the momentum away from the fake news before it gets too far. More eyes correcting falsehoods means a more truthful Internet. And while we cannot remove every bit of misinformation that crosses our paths, we can learn to correct ourselves and keep our peers accountable, for everyone’s safety.