Today, December 8, Thanh Nien Newspaper organized a discussion with the topic: "Resistance" to toxic, harmful information and online fraud at the University of Economics and Finance, Ho Chi Minh City, with the participation of representatives of management agencies, experts in technology, information security, online services, and young people who are students - representing the group of users who are exposed to the internet environment.
Speaking at the opening of the discussion, Dr. Huynh Van Thong (Head of the Department of Communication, Faculty of Journalism and Communication, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City) stated that fighting fake news, bad news, and harmful news is not only a "war" in Vietnam but also a difficult problem on a global scale.
Dr. Huynh Van Thong commented that in the past, initial information would often go through a process of verification and responsible editing by news agencies, with professional responsibilities, following ethical standards and professional rules to turn them into reliable information, and then transfer them to official channels such as newspapers, publishers, television... to become mass information. When it becomes mass information, it still has a story of right and wrong, then it goes through a process of post-editing, editing, correction, and explanation.
Dr. Huynh Van Thong at the seminar organized by Thanh Nien Newspaper
But society and human history are always developing and we no longer have the opportunity to go back to the way it was before. Just like in the past people said that if you want to have knowledge, you have to read newspapers, now the sad thing is that if you want to read newspapers, you have to have knowledge. Because there are still things like sometimes there is also incorrect information, there is information called distortion. Incorrect information can be due to mistakes or negligence, but distortion is intentional.
Online media has created information quickly, bringing life-changing opportunities to everyone in just a moment. Dr. Thong believes that the online media environment starts from the first sender, creating the original news, then moves to the production mechanism, the self-production mechanism. There will be many people participating in the new process, reproducing/self-producing, interacting, sharing... and will repeat many times.
By the time it reaches the public, it has become a “news cloud” from an initial news report. This also explains why many people fall into scam traps, because the scenario behind it has been set up.
It can be said that for the first news to reach the public, it had to go through a completely uncontrolled process. The peaceful information journey now has the process of reproduction, spreading in the digital environment, being affected by personal aspects and bias effects, halo effects... These effects we do not have time to analyze, leading to chaos.
We are living in a period of information chaos, not just "fake news" or "real news". We are overloaded, no longer have enough resources, skills, awareness to provide complete and serious information. We can verify 1, 10 or 100 pieces of information but cannot handle thousands or millions of pieces of information. The information explosion, the data explosion leads to overload, from which the quality of information will decrease.
Guests attending the discussion organized by Thanh Nien Newspaper
So in an information-exploding society, the threat of false information leads to a painful scenario where even real news is doubted, no one believes anything anymore. This leads to a phenomenon where some people tend to reject news, no longer want to process information, and then information disorder, becoming a media problem.
Information disorder can be seen as a loss of control over the value of information and truth, caused by the production and dissemination of false or misleading information, or controversial information.
Currently, there are three types of misinformation, the first is false information but not malicious, the next is distorted information (with malicious intent) and malicious information, this type of information may be true, may be based on something real but the motive behind it is evil. When being careless with information, users can unintentionally support such content. Fraud is one of the purposes behind misinformation. Currently, there is a lot of content, especially images shared online to appeal to viewers' emotions to serve different purposes.
To avoid becoming a recipient and spreader of bad and toxic information, Dr. Thong believes that users should have a pure motive for receiving information, avoid prejudice, and verify it themselves. If they do not have enough skills, they should consult with friends and use tools to verify.
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