When I first set out to do this project, I knew that I wanted to advocate for a better understanding of the label “Fake News”. My central goal was to transmit the message that the label has become a symbol for the news media organizations that the president dislikes – mostly because they air what he deems to be “unfair” coverage of him – and that this is highly problematic. The danger with the label “fake news” is mainly that it is impeding a real, productive conversation on the rapidly increasing danger of the spread of misinformation by different sources that intentionally seek to mislead people in the hopes of either gaining clicks (and in consequence money) or simply to create unrest because it is of political gain to them to do so. Therefore, what I wanted to advocate for was a definition of “fake news” – and in consequence a redefinition of the label the president had created – that everybody could agree upon so that at least we were all discussing the same thing.
To accomplish, I decided that a video would be most effective, because I wanted to specifically include the visuals of well-known celebrities speaking of the label “fake news” because I though it would be useful. As such, I created a sort of PSA with an element of Remix, because the first thirty seconds of the video is a remix of found footage of a wide variety of well-known television personalities saying the word “fake news” in different contexts. My goal with this was to make the viewer understand the true prevalence and widespread nature of the label nowadays in our political discourse. Furthermore, I put classical in the background that slowly built up towards a crescendo so as to denote the urgency and almost dizzying nature of how often the label is being thrown around by people. After showing this, the next task I set out to do was interviewing students – I got five good interviews – and asking every one of them the same question; “what does the label fake news means to you”? They all had different answers, and so this helped to establish my point that we need one singular definition that we can all agree upon for the label “fake news”. To really drive home my point, I filmed myself in different locations giving a brief historical summary of how the label “fake news” changed over the years. In this endeavor, articles by Politico and The Economist’s 1843 Magazine were very useful. Finally, having established the historical trajectory of the label, I arrived at the central message of my PSA; Fake News is simply false or misleading information, and should not be a way for Donald Trump to dismiss news media he does not personally like. I ended with a sort of slogan for my PSA at the end that I hoped would stick in people’s heads: “Fake News; Know What It Is”.
Found Footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06tb-P7Ijgo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMBs1oJBjKM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veZs75jlAlw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSkgPr31Bgs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzwXgovJko4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cajxAGbZlM
Sources
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/fake-news-exactly-has-really-had-influence/
https://www.1843magazine.com/technology/rewind/the-true-history-of-fake-news
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535
Trifling Works 