WeChat: How Chinese students consume (fake) news in Australia

The Fake News epidemic in Australia is not exclusive to western social media sites such as Facebook. WeChat, the Chinese social media behemoth, has a strong presence in Australia among international students from China of which there are almost 200,000 each year.

Chinese students who are unable to read local English language use WeChat as their primary source of news. The revenue model is similar to Facebook- the higher the views the higher the potential for advertising income. This results in the production of sensationalised fake news with themes of nationalism.

Australian Red Scarf is one of the most popular WeChat pages in Australia. The site claims to translate Australian news for a Chinese audience. However it is filled with exaggeration, opinion memes and attention grabbing headlines making it a source of Fake News.

Three top fake news stories are:

1. Not only have the nuclear test areas been polluted, but every city of the Australian east coast is facing a nuclear crisis

2. Breaking! ISIS officially announced their Australian attack! Many famous locations in Sydney and Melbourne targeted

3. White Australia Policy is Back

-Jake

Trumpaganda

What’s a blog on fake news without addressing Trump?

Trump did not invent Fake news nor was he the first administration to have a contentious relationship with the press yet it is no secret that Trump’s use of propaganda has significantly popularised the term, evident during his 2016 presidential election and to some extent, it helped him win.

Fast forward 2 years and fake news have flooded the internet and social media has become weaponised to an extent that it is more effective than airstrikes in destroying the target, in this case legitimate news. Therefore, it comes to no surprise that aside from shaping Trump’s fortunes, fake news has since been used by activists, propagandists and thought police to curate a tide of opinion. By the time the truth is dug up, who knows what damage has already been done.

Of course, Trump has continuously spoken out against ‘fake news’ and journalism, calling it the ‘enemy of the American people‘. You see, Trump likes to tell us what he thinks about Fake News.

Exhibit A: 

Exhibit B,C,D,E…..

Yes, he has a lot to say.  However, what’s ironic is that for all the president’s complaints, he also craves validation from the media. In fact, Trump has given exclusive interviews to The New York Times and, in addition to loving Fox News, reportedly watches CNN and MSNBC every morning.

He is also often the center of fake news posts.

You may have come across this edited photo that appears to show Donald Trump floating in a raft, extending a red Make America Great Again hat to a flood victim. It went viral last year but has resurfaced online as a result of Hurricane Florence

As New York Times reporter Kevin Roose pointed out on Twitter, the pic is a fake ― it was taken in Central Texas in 2015, long before Trump was elected president, and he definitely wasn’t in that raft.

Take a look at the real photo 

It has been shared 275,000 times on Facebook.

Trumps direct and indirect involvement with fake news will continue to exist.

According to a 2018 survey done by ABC, about 7 in 10 Australians are now worried about the spread of false information and of ‘fake news’ being used as a weapon to mislead and influence public opinion. Political engagement is also on the decline.

What can be done? 

Fact-checking. Of course, by fact-checking,  I don’t mean researching every single thing you read on the internet. It can simply mean being mindful of the mediasphere and the key catalysts of fake news (Trump being one of them). It means encouraging public figures to think more carefully about the quality of information they are disseminating.

Look out for more tweets from Trump I’m sure there will be plenty.

P.S Trumpaganda (the title of this blogpost) is actually the name of a university course offered at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign examining President Donald Trump’s impact on democracy and the free press.

-Cecilia

Google, I thought you were my friend

Who’s Trustworthy?

Why do we have so many untrained reporters and sensationalist stories floating around? What is the trigger that has inevitably started this never-ending cycle?

The answer is a familiar one: the internet.

The internet has undoubtedly changed the way we consume news whether it be on social media or on a site. In fact, confidence in the media is at an ‘all-time low‘. However, the internet isn’t going away any time soon, so we as netizens, citizens, readers and users must develop an appetite for facts.

With the onset of the ‘click’ economy, you can never be so sure with any news outlet or source, whether it be a credible national organisation or a blog site because hiding behind the reputation of a media company could be a lazy, untrained journalist.

Exhibit A: 

The story of the Thai Cave rescue captured the world’s attention in mid-July this year, dominating all social media platforms as a hot topic. Above is a clip that was highly shared, attracting millions of views on Twitter with the hashtag #13ชีวิตต้องรอด showing cave divers exploring a narrow tunnel.

Seven news was quick to catch on and also tweeted the video. 

However, lo and behold the footage actually came from a 2012 video from Wisconsin.

According to Storyful, the video has been online for a while and shows “clear water conditions whereas the water that flooded the cave was muddy, providing zero visibility for cave divers”.

So here we have it, even seven news, a highly rated and one of Australia’s largest news networks didn’t check up on facts.

So what can we take out of this?

Some might say boycott media organisations but that’s not the way to go because as Professor Fernandez from Curtin’s School of Media once said, there is a pending danger that if people stop trusting the news, they will stop trusting institutions and will stop participating in significant public debates. Debates are still very much needed in our society because that’s how we initiate progress and change. 

Instead, we must start demanding facts and read critically and the mediasphere will change accordingly.

Cecilia