Spurf
Social media is just as able to disseminate false information as mainstream media, possibly faster due to the speed with which it can forwarded. Once ideas are planted and people hear it from disparate sources it becomes fact to many, whether on not it is true. Social media deals in sound bites and snapshots. Considered lengthy opinions do not get attention. When I was at university my group was split into four. Each small group was given a series of 10 photographs about the miners' strike. We were tasked with providing a 2 minute news broadcast from differing perspectives, BBC, ITV, NBC and Russian World News. From identical limited data given to us all came four widely varying versions of events due to effect we wished to have on our audience. It showed that without full access to all information none of us are able to discern the truth. These days not many people have the time to do their own research and make their own decisions, but rely on conclusions given to them by others. Possibly the only time the Sun said something accurate was when it ran the headline "it's the Sun wot won it" referring to a General Election result