We asked Margarita Bocharova, journalist and editor of the Shishkin_like media project, about why people disseminate fake news, what role media literacy plays in Kazakhstan, and what people should do to avoid becoming victims of propaganda.
Fake news is a big problem in today’s world. Why do you think it exists in the first place?
Fake news is created for many purposes, like to boost traffic to a website or discredit a public figure, social movement, or political campaign.
The people who create fake news often do so for personal gain. The people spreading it also benefit, but in a completely different way – they are trying to improve their social status, show their control of a situation, or convince themselves of their own importance. At least, this is what contemporary anthropologists think:
How can you check the validity of an information source?
I refer here to the well-known Russian media expert Alexander Amzin – in his book, he notes that all sources of information, barring direct observation, can be biased. Journalists cannot, by definition, know the whole truth about what they are writing about.
