Sunday, November 7, 2010

Misinformation spread on the internet

As Kiyoshi mentioned, for Japanese people, the diplomatic dispute with China is the biggest issue recently. Especially, some Japanese internet heavy users are losing their temper, since their political beliefs tend to be right and extream patriorism. So they are called "internet-right wing".

These internet users try to spread as much information as possible. As a result, we can see a lot of correct information and incorrect information. One example of (probably) correct information is the movie, Kiyoshi mentioned. If you access YouTube with location setting as Japan, Most Viewed videos are these movies.

However, incorrect information also spread rapidly on the internet. An internet user found the article of BBC written in Chinese including "事故沒有造成人員傷亡" [The accident caused NO dead and wounded]. He/she tried to translate the sentence to Japanese, and Google Translate said "事故は、死傷者が発生" [The accident caused dead and wounded].

After seeing this translation (in fact, mistranslation by Google Translate), he/she thought that "this fact was hidden by unreliable Japanese government! I must spread this fact!" And he/she did, then caused bunch of Fwd, RT, etc. by internet right wing.

Before now, other interenet users have corrected the misinformation using the same way, Retweet or else. But... please think which information spread more rapidly and widely, (a) Sensational information (b) Correction of the information ? In Japan, especially among internet right wing, (a) is much faster than (b). So this misinformation have not yet completely disappear.

"There's no smoke without fire." Almost all Japanese people know this proverb. But they should know that "we live in internet era, when there could be smoke without fire "

1 comment:

  1. This actually sounds a lot like Internet strategies employed in propaganda politics of the U.S. The diminished importance of fact-checks and credible source citations has encouraged this type of behavior and the informal environment surrounding online information exchange has certainly exacerbated the situation. I am not sure if this problem can be solved easily as notions of propriety/etiquette/grammar have broken down so dramatically and the concrete consequences of reposting items without source verification/fact-checks have never been spelled out.

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