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.
So, the best thing a reader can do is to trust those sources that provide them with a reasonable choice
