“Imane Khelif’s Father Breaks Silence on the 2024 Olympic Boxing Champion’s Gender Identity -‘She Is Transgender, Not a Boy’ Amid Rising Speculation” a now-deleted Facebook post headline reads. In the comments section below, users continue to add to this narrative by saying “Check to see if he/she has ovaries” and “the truth will come out.”
Just as that Facebook user will see, and the millions of other fake news outlets that reported on this story will come to find out, the quote was actually completely fabricated. In fact, the entire story is false—Imane Khelif was born a woman.
But how did it spread this far? How did the Boston Globe, a pulitzer-prize winning paper, publish a false headline stating “Transgender boxer advances”? How did users such as Elon Musk, J.K. Rowling and Logan Paul take to X their thoughts, before ever fact-checking their opinion?
This incident isn’t the first, nor will it be the last.
In our current digital age, as it gets easier and easier to like, comment, and retweet a post on social media, we must be diligent about our media literacy. According to a Medium survey, the average person spends 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media everyday and checks their phone 159 times a day.
As technology continues to advance at its rapid rate, those statistics will only grow larger and larger, allowing the general population to spend more time on their phone than ever before.
Take for example the 2020 election. With Donald Trump running for his second term and Joe Biden looking to win his first, the political divide between the two parties not only grew, but raised concerns for many. According to a 2020 pre-election Pew Research survey, 77% of Americans felt that the country was “more divided” [politically] compared to before.
Much of this could be accredited to the media/news being showcased either from news channels or social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, X, and so on, especially when it came from political nominees like Trump, who according to the Washington Post made 30,573 false claims exhibited in news outlets and on social media.
These false claims made by Trump not only was a tactic for his campaign, but instilled fear-mongering between voters especially from opposing parties. Comments like, “If he [Joe Biden] wins [the 2020 election], you’re going to end up with a disaster,” or in his most recent debate with Kamala Harris, “In Springfield they [Haitian immigrants] are eating the dogs. The people [Haitian immigrants] that came in, they are eating the cats.”
These claims made by Trump create a divide in political parties. An example can be seen through a study done by the Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development that found false claims made by high political figures like Trump, made Republicans read Trump’s statements to further amplify their political views while on the other hand, it prompted Democrats to further reject the opposing parties views.
In light of this, it is also important to notice that misinformation can come in many different forms, ranging from presidential candidates to simple 30- to 60-second Instagram reels popping up on your page. Even though the source may be of high status and credibility, people should not be afraid to question the validity of a certain statement or belief, otherwise we can get caught in the culture of “fear mongering” one another into a divided democracy.
With that in mind, we must educate ourselves through available resources and understanding the new and growing threats the internet poses from AI to social media platforms.
Angela McGowan-Kirsch, an Associate Professor at State University of New York, Fredonia, researched a subsection of this issue: its impact on college students in her published paper “Educating emerging citizens: Media literacy as a tool for combating the spread of image-based misinformation” with graduate student, Grace Quinlivan. She notes that especially as the digital media ecosystem is emerging, college students must be prepared with the proper resources to sift through fake news on their own.
“It’s important that today’s emerging citizens know how to spot and refute mis/disinformation they encounter [it] online,” McGowan-Kirsch said.
As McGowan-Kirsch emphasizes the impact that AI will have on the proliferation of misinformation with her unit activity, specified in the paper, used AI images to depict false situations of Former President Trump’s first indictment in 2023.
“With a large number of emerging citizens regularly consuming news on Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook, having a media-literate electorate is important,” McGowan-Kirsch said.
We must enact proper legislation within our government processes to address all aspects of false information propagating in our society. For example, adding a clause that focuses on digital mis/disinformation in the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act can be beneficial in raising awareness as our duty in democracy. Furthermore, as PALY students must consider the sources where we receive our information, whether the source is reputable, credible or accurate; by reading the New York Times, the Washington Post or listening to NPR it gives us a well-rounded view on the challenges the world is currently going through.
We must remember that the problem doesn’t stop from the government or political figures, but instead us as citizens of the United States of America. With our democracy hanging onto a tightrope, we must take action in increasing our media literacy by pushing for the enactment of proper legislation and awareness of mis/disinformation in order to mend the divide that we have created.