Disinformation

Disinformation is also known as 'fake news', which is something that is very present in today's society. Especially after the 2016 election, there have been multiple occurrences where fake news has been tied into social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. As discussed in the group presentation, there were many different ways that Trump used fake news to get ahead in the 2016 election. He was able to do this by creating a Facebook page called the "Heart of Texas" which was a ploy to target the people against his opponent Hillary Clinton. The goal of this page was to look for people that were pro veteran/ republican and get them to follow the page and support Trump's campaign by getting people together in a group setting over social media. Years after the election, it has been confirmed that there was Russian assistance with this Facebook page, which only proves that the 2016 election was not won just by Trump himself whatsoever. Not only Facebook is guilty of doing this, Twitter was also accused of promoting fake voting techniques. People were posting all over Twitter claiming that there were alternative ways to vote, whether it was texting your vote to a certain number or simply tweeting your vote. In reality, neither of those options are legal and this tactic confused many voters. Since so many people were convinced that they were voting over social media or by sending a simple text, there was a huge gap in the number of people that actually came out voting day to physically send in their vote. Was this the end goal for Republicans all along? It sure seems like it but it really was our fault to allow them to control us in such a way that we really believed that something as serious as a presidential vote could be recorded over social media or text without being somewhat tampered with