{"id":3790,"date":"2015-03-20T09:50:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T14:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/?p=3790"},"modified":"2015-03-20T09:50:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T14:50:49","slug":"social-media-spreading-false-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/social-media-spreading-false-information\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media spreading false information"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By SHAKIRA MOLET<\/p>\n<p>Recently, a story about a first grader being sexual assaulted by male classmates has been circulating the Internet. Unfortunately, there is one problem with this story. It&#8217;s not true.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/10418899_10205284393102517_1206042616331315096_n.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-medium wp-image-3791 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/10418899_10205284393102517_1206042616331315096_n-168x300.jpg\" alt=\"10418899_10205284393102517_1206042616331315096_n\" width=\"168\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/10418899_10205284393102517_1206042616331315096_n-168x300.jpg 168w, https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/10418899_10205284393102517_1206042616331315096_n.jpg 539w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 168px) 100vw, 168px\" \/><\/a>While scrolling through my dash in Tumblr, I found this post stating that the girl in the picture had been both physically and sexually abused by three first grade boys in her class.<\/p>\n<p>According to the post, the victim &#8220;suffered scarring to the right side of her face from broken tree branches and rocks&#8221; while she was being assaulted in the woods.<\/p>\n<p>After reading this, I wondered why this was my first time seeing such a \u00a0significant story. I especially wondered why I had seen this on a social networking site, other than Facebook, before it was reported on any news site. So, I decided to do some research. What I found was interesting.<\/p>\n<p>To my surprise, I did not find this story with that exact picture online. Instead, I found another news story about a seven-year-old being attacked by a kangaroo and receiving bruises all over her face in Australia. You can read the real story below:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralwesterndaily.com.au\/story\/793373\/roo-attacks-girl-at-wyangala\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.centralwesterndaily.com.au\/story\/793373\/roo-attacks-girl-at-wyangala\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So what does this prove? Because of the Internet, it has become possible for anyone to report on the &#8220;news,&#8221; which is an advantage in the way that there is more coverage; however, it is also a disadvantage due to the fact that absolutely anyone with a computer can just make up a story, add a random picture to it and call it an official news story.<\/p>\n<p>Since this power is in the hands of the public, it is our duty as journalists to always check the sources of information for a story in order not to be duped by false information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By SHAKIRA MOLET Recently, a story about a first grader being sexual assaulted by male classmates has been circulating the Internet. Unfortunately, there is one problem with this story. It&#8217;s not true. While scrolling through my dash in Tumblr, I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/social-media-spreading-false-information\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[26,25],"class_list":["post-3790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shakira-molet","tag-reporting","tag-social-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3790"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3794,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790\/revisions\/3794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}