The big news story that has dogged the Trump administration since its inception is the Russian interference in the 2016 election. The newest development is one step closer to getting to the bottom of what has been happening: on February 16, 2018, special counsel investigator Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

One of the factors that influenced the last election was fake news. Though this term has gained popularity to discredit sources, the implication here is that “fake news” is a fabrication of the facts–it has nothing to do with ideology.

According to NAI’s librarian Ms. Ziemski, “fake news is information disguised as fact meant to draw readers in and provide them with false information.”

The term fake news was popularized by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign; he still uses the term to discredit the mainstream media’s stories. Since then, his relationship with the term has flourished. On October 5, 2017,  the president tweeted, “Why Isn’t the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!”

This inflammatory rhetoric and disregard for the press is dangerous for the country and its first amendment protections. Yet, to a certain extent, he has a point: there has been a massive influx of fake news.

So, what does fake news actually look like? How is it produced? How do people believe it?

The indictment touches on the topic of Russia’s infamous Internet Research Agency, a branch of the Russian government devoted to the creation and spreading of fake news. The Internet Research Agency was most likely created in 2014 by Vladimir Putin. According to a Time Magazine article, the purpose of the IRA was to “create fake accounts on social media and use them to post comments online as the bosses instructed. The broader effort of the factory, however, was a state-of-the-art propaganda campaign.”

A stunning example of this is happening right now: after President Trump, along with the United Kingdom and France, ordered a missile strike in Syria, the Russian government delivered a blunt and reactive statement warning against further missile strikes. Additionally, the Pentagon announced that “after the missile strikes, there was a 2000% increase in bots and Russian trolls” on social media.

One major question that has been asked by many is, “How can people believe fake news?” Well, there is a very unfortunate and clear answer.

Fake news is purposefully designed to appeal to the reader; for example, on right-wing fake news websites, fabricated stories may be found that create feelings of resentment towards the opposite party in the reader. This, in turn, complements the Russian’s bots and trolls on social media, which inflame the emotions of the people on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Unfortunately, far too many people do not have the sufficient education in digital literacy to spot these fallacies.

Russians used very clever marketing techniques to incite division and partisanship in the American political atmosphere. The House of Representatives was able to collect and identify Facebook memes and posts that were Russian-produced, with the intent of political division (see picture).

Let’s take a close look at the Facebook post: there were 3,100 reactions, so more than 3,000 people came into contact with this post. Additionally, it was shared more than 1,000 times. The post doesn’t look like it was created by a foreign source; it echoes the woes of many. But, this is the point! From a Russian standpoint, they took the most divisive rhetoric from campaigns or from the current political climate, and reverberated it throughout social media, fueling hate, division, and raw emotion.

One important thing to note is that there was a clear Russian bias against presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; during the 2016 Democratic primary season, Russia used the Internet Research Agency for Bernie Sanders’ benefit. In the general election season, the Russians used the agency’s resources to create a “mini-community” of bigots and racists, which created a sense of normalization that allowed racists to have a platform.

The following exchange occurred at a Senate hearing in June 2017:

SENATOR ANGUS KING: Was the Russian activity in the 2016 election a one-off proposition? Or is this part of a long-term strategy? Will they be back?

JAMES COMEY: They’ll be back…it’s not a Republican thing or Democratic thing. It really is an American thing.

The advent of foreign interference with the use of the Internet is a scary thing to imagine. If the government (and the public) remain subject to the influx of fake news, and fake accounts flooding every person’s newsfeeds and social media feeds, when do we know what to believe? If the assault on truth and reality continues, how do we know what is real, and what is not?

This devastating assault on our democracy can result in chaos, and possibly the toppling of our great nation.

How can we, as individuals, fight this?

We need to be digitally literate.

American citizens need to begin to reform their way of thinking when it comes to the news. In previous generations, newspapers were the sole sources that people had for information on current events. However, as time went on, more and more networks appeared, and these networks catered to different tastes. Then, the dot-com boom began; news sites popped up all over the Internet, and this new window to the world became a new way to spread information. However, different people (and governments) found the advantage to the naiveness that went along with the beginning of the Internet and exploited that advantage by using the Internet for misinformation campaigns and propaganda. As time went on, countries developed more and more sophisticated techniques to advance their own agenda; knowing how to know what is fact-based, what is propaganda, and what is malicious and/or unintentional misinformation, is of utmost importance.

The news is slowly shifting from a unipolar atmosphere of truth and fact to a multipolar atmosphere of catering to everybody’s opinion. So, in essence, everyone can surround themselves with news only they want to read. When reading a news article, cross-reference it; read different points of view, then create your own informed opinion. Additionally, blogs such as Trend Micro advise that “readers should take steps to identify fake news, including looking out for characteristics such as clickbait headlines, suspicious domain names, a lack of publication time or date, and a lack of cited sources.”

After the election, there have been revelations that have sparked outrage; however, the companies being targeted are taking steps to make sure this never happens again. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed at a hearing last week that by the end of 2018, Facebook will have approximately, if not more than, 20,000 employees on the hunt for fake news, bots, and trolls.

Senator Ben Sasse (R- Nebraska) reflected on this topic in a statement, when he paints a picture of what “the wars of the future will look like…The fog of war will not be limited to our situation rooms and battlefields.” His statement echoes the warnings of many; what the outcome of this assault on truth turns out to be lies upon the shoulders of our elected leaders and company executives to keep malicious foreign interference out.