AN AMERICAN communications professor urged journalism students to be sensible in the use of social media to avoid misinformation and vulnerability from fake information.
Stephanie Edgerly, an associate professor of the Medill School of Journalism in Chicago, Illinois, said the lack of context in social media often leads to the spread of false information.
“When the source gets detached, people lose the important context from the original post as it was given a new context by the new uploader,” Edgerly said.
Since information needs to be quickly disseminated, quality and accuracy are often neglected. This carelessness usually happens in times of calamities, she added.
In an interview with the Varsitarian, Edgerly said sources of information were among the Philippines’ problems in the use of social media.
“If you don’t know the differences in fake and real sources, you are more susceptible to believing things that you should not believe,” she said.
The lecture-forum, titled, “Getting Real About Fake News,” was organized by the UST Journalism Society.
The John Jefferson Siler lecture-forum was first introduced in February 2017 in honor of the American professor who founded the UST journalism program in 1932.
