The rise of social media as a form of mass communication has changed the face of society and how we communicate with each other. No longer are we limited to the few people we gather around us but now our messages can be heard all over the globe. We can spread information instantly to thousands or millions of people instantly. Some people see this as an opportunity to spread misinformation or hoaxes. Many of these hoaxes are completely harmless little jokes that people like to play.
Did y’all know that if you change your birthday on Twitter to 2007 your feed becomes colorful!?? It’s p fucking lit ngl y’all should do it
— DERICK (@holyshitderick) August 13, 2019
Some of them can be very dangerous and spread incredibly misleading or downright false information.
An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama‘s birth certificate is a fraud.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2012
People can create these in order to put their own spin on any number of topics. From skewing how we see politicians and celebrities to causing panic and unnecessary anxiety among the people. The 2016 US presidential election was full of internet hoaxes about both of the candidates. It seemed like every other week some new Hoax would pop up claiming that “Hillary Clinton is dying” or “Donald Trump wants to go to war with NATO” these were exclusively pushed for political reasons. This seems to be the underlying reason for some of the more prominent internet Hoaxes in our time. It is fully expected that we will begin to see more of these types of hoaxes as this next election cycle really starts to get moving
Sources
https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf