BY ADDISALEM MULAT
With the rise of social media, misinformation and disinformation are turning out to be a threat to the entire world and a source of unrest, chaos, and conflict. In many instances, the world has over the years seen cooked-up stories pushing the world into uncharted territory. Misinformation has also become a weapon sin election as witnessed in the 2016 U.S presidential run.
Fake news and misinformation have the potential of taking one’s country into bottomless pit. From advanced to developing nations, the world is grappling with the rise of misinformation.
CNN reported that as many as three in four Americans overestimate their ability to spot false headlines — and the worse they are at it, the more likely they are to share fake news, researchers reported.
The study of surveys involving 8,200 people, which published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also showed Republicans are more likely to fall for fake news than Democrats are.
The team, led by Ben Lyons, a professor of communications at the University of Utah, showed study volunteers headlines presented in the format of how news articles would look if they appeared in a Facebook feed. They were also asked to rate their ability to determine whether stories were true.
“We show that overconfident individuals are more likely to visit untrustworthy websites in behavioral data; to fail to successfully distinguish between true and false claims about current events in survey questions; and to report greater willingness to like or share false content on social media, especially when it is politically congenial,” the team wrote.
“In all, these results paint a worrying picture: The individuals who are least equipped to identify false news content are also the least aware of their own limitations and, therefore, more susceptible to believing it and spreading it further,” they added.
The rise of disinformation may partly have to do with expansion social media, but it also going viral in among the mainstream media. This is way; countries are coming up with anti-cyber and misinformation measures.
In a sharp contradiction to the essences of journalism, even some international media outlets are either sending a tsunami of misinformation or being used as tool for disinformation.
A good instance is the case of law enforcement operations that took place Tigray state intending to restore legitimate administration, bringing fugitives to justice, disarming the TPLF junta officials, and other things of a similar kind. , However, some international media outlets have been getting themselves engaged in a smear campaign of misinformation On the basis thereof, a considerable amount of international print and electronic media outlets of the world were bewildering the international community with cooked up stories that do not show the reality on the ground. They have been persistently coming up with fake news and becoming a pain in the neck to Ethiopia though achieving the sought after goal is impossible.
It is no hyperbole to say, Ethiopia is one of the victims of misinformation and disinformation in the present climate. As some international media outlets have been mystifying the international community, some of them failed to understand the whole picture of what has been going on in the Tigray region and blaming Ethiopia over and over again.
Although the media outlets are on familiar terms with what the incumbent has been doing in every nook and cranny of the Tigray region, they have been turning a blind eye on the efforts of the government. Most the good works the government has done has fallen on the deaf ears of the media.
However, to counter act the problem ambassadors and Ethiopian Diasporas residing in various parts of the world have been pulling out all the stops in furtherance of bringing to light the honest truth and mitigating the spread of misinformation.
Regrettably, even worse, the media outlets emboldened by Egyptian propaganda, have opened a floodgate of misinformation regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam times out of numbers. In defiance of the fact that Ethiopia contributes 86% of the Nile River and does not want to cause any significant harm to downstream countries, the international media outlets have been distorting the reality. They were taking side with Egypt and its allies and mystifying the world.
Needless to say Egypt has never made an effort to resolve predicaments concerning the Nile River in an orderly fashion. Furthermore, the country has buckled down to fulfill its interest by destabilizing Ethiopia utilizing every possible means. Since time immemorial, no matter what the cost may be Egypt has been using the issue of the Nile River as a way out to their internal hitches. Sad as it might sound, the media outlets distance themselves from the truth and endeavor to confuse the worldwide community through untrustworthy information.
Though international media outlets have knowledge of the fact that Ethiopia is building a hydroelectric dam, not a gigantic scale farm irrigation scheme that causes any significant harm to downstream nations, and comprehends the fact that Ethiopia has no option other than building such a dam to preserve the surroundings and more of the same, they disseminate information that adds fuel to the fire in the twinkling of an eye.
By the same token, they do not report the fact that Egypt is a coastal nation, and approximately 60% of its landscape is surrounded by Mediterranean and Red Sea waters and Suez Canal.
The Ethiopian Herald July 9/2021
