There is an infinite amount of blogs issuing warnings, advice and tips on health and safety. With so much of this information being unsubstantiated viewers face the Fake News Dilemma: I Don’t Know What To Believe.
For the most part, this dilemma is encountered with celebrity gossip or sensationalized politics. However, the case study of the Hawaii Missile Alert can be seen as an example whereby the Fake News Dilemma resulted in total inaction by the public to a potentially real threat.
In 2018, the state department of Hawaii issued a warning:
The alert was a mistake by someone pressing the wrong button. More interesting is the public reaction. Some Hawaiians went into panic mode while others waited for further confirmation. The fact that many people did not believe the alert was real can be attributed to the rise of Fake News. They didn’t know if it was a joke, a stunt or in fact a real missile threat.Thus the Fake News phenomena impacts the ability of governments to communicate to their citizens in times of crisis. With so much misinformation circulating people become skeptical of everything including what is real; as seen in the case study of Hawaii.
-Jake
FlakeOnFake 