Today's media landscape is larger and more diverse than ever before. Individuals are fedwith news and information from many different types of media. When competition ishigh, media actors need to stand out to be noticed, sometimes to the extent that the truthis omitted or embellished. The purpose of this essay is to examine the consequences ofthe spread of false information on social media. The material of the essay consists of 25Swedish videoclips from YouTube and is intended to investigate how well the videoportals (headlines & thumbnails) correspond to the actual content of the videos. Themethod used in the essay is a quantitative coding of these videoclips and a multimodalanalysis from a selection of these coded video clips. To fulfill the purpose of the essay,theories and concepts such as misinformation and disinformation, filter bubbles, andselective exposure theory are used. The results of the study showed that many videoportals do not correspond at all to the content that the clip possesses. They oftenexaggerate or add details that make the video clip stand out more or appear moreinteresting for the audience to engage with. The consequences of false information spreadon social media can be many. For example, it can contribute to somewhat distortedworldviews. If individuals in a society are fed with incorrect information, it becomes moredifficult to get a fair picture of the world. It can also become normalized that thingswritten on social media are often not true, which leads to it becoming commonplace tobuy into small lies and not trust the information and news consumed online.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hig-42119 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Sewon, Isak |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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