2016 - the year that wasn't

When I was doing my media studies undergrad degree, we were taught about two types of newspapers - broadsheets and tabloids. Without going into too much detail, broadsheets were credible, while tabloids were salacious. Aside from the quality of content, there were several ways of telling the two apart - from the size, layout and design to the font, style, number of photos and types of headline.

The headline is a biggie. For example, when US singer Whitney Houston died in 2012, broadsheet headlines reported something like: "World mourns Whitney Houston", while tabloid headlines read: "Whitney died in bath after 48-hour binge". See the difference?

With the rise of the Internet as a main source of news content, one would think these "standards" would just be translated into a digital format, with the look and feel of reliable news sources appearing more professional and polished than their less formal, and less trustworthy, counterparts. Not so much. While "fake news" is nothing new, sites that generate this vitriolic rhetoric have recently become somewhat of an epidemic. And the purveyors of these lies are getting much better at masquerading as upstanding news sources.

If you look at any of the top news stories from the past year, for each factual story, the odds are there will be at least one phoney. Take Harambe, the now infamous gorilla that was shot, in May, after a toddler climbed into his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. In the wake of the Harambe incident, the Web site for the Christian Times Newspaper (this is a fake news site, by the way) published a story explaining that presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton had linked Harambe's shooting to racism. "If that gorilla was white, this situation would have ended differently," was the quote attributed to Clinton.

This may sound ridiculous when you read it now, but it's when you're not really concentrating too hard that these things catch you. Had you or I come across this headline one morning while mindlessly scrolling through our Facebook newsfeed, after arriving at work, we may easily have been fooled.

And this is the problem. Because social networks and online platforms have become such powerful disseminators of information, and because we generally scan through news headlines while we're busy doing something else, we rarely take the time to stop and question whether or not they're accurate. And remember what I was saying about the power of headlines earlier? The more lewd and scandalous, the greater the chance it'll catch your eye. Which is exactly what fake sites are banking on.

One arena that has been hit hard by this spate of fake news is the world of politics. In fact, an editor at Buzzfeed analysed Facebook articles with the most traction in the months leading up to the recent US election, and his findings showed false news stories may have had a sizable impact on the voting public's perceptions. Basically, the data showed the "top fake election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than the top election stories from 19 major news outlets combined".

The more lewd and scandalous, the greater the chance it'll catch your eye.

Buzzfeed's analysis also revealed that of the 20 highest performing false elections stories, a vast majority - 17 in total - were overtly pro-Trump or anti-Clinton. Some of these included 'gems' professing that the pope had shown support for the Trump campaign, or that Clinton was somehow linked to a child sex trafficking ring running out of a pizza restaurant.

And it isn't just a US problem. In Germany, there is growing concern this kind of misinformation could affect the nation's 2017 federal elections. Already, articles alleging current German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is the progeny of Adolf Hitler, and that she was once a member of the East German Secret Police, the Stasi, are doing the rounds.

Closer to home, in August, African News Updates, a fake new site, reported two men were arrested after being found with more than 80 000 ballot papers already marked as ANC votes. The article claimed the men were trying to make the ANC appear "corrupt", and were likely to be working for the DA and EFF.

But, whose responsibility is it to discern the ludicrous from the legitimate?

The way I see it, it requires a three-pronged approach.

Firstly, journalists and the mainstream media need to be more diligent. Yes, the nature and pace of the traditional news cycle has changed, but that doesn't mean the organisations that are supposed to be giving the general public the most well-rounded representation of the truth should be excused for not properly checking their facts. More than ever, they need to do everything in their power to ensure they use the written word responsibly.

Secondly, whether they like it or not, the likes of Facebook and Google have become embroiled in the hoax hype. With almost all of the traffic to fake news sites coming from Facebook, the social network's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has decided to add a "user-reporting feature" to every post. The hope is to get the Facebook community involved in efforts to weed out the lies.

And, finally, people need to be more critical of what's out there. You can't trust everything you read online. The US elections may be over, but it doesn't mean there are fewer fake stories going around. If it sounds absurd, it probably is. So please, take a moment before hitting "share".