Should you get your news from Social Media?

National World - LocalTV

Between the accusations levied at Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif and the misplaced rumours surrounding the Southport attacker, social media has been at the heart of two major misinformation scandals recently, so can it be trusted?  Here is a little explainer.

Transcript

00:00Now over the last couple of years social media has become more of a source of news for a lot of people.

00:03There's a good chance in fact that you're watching this video on maybe TikTok or Instagram or something similar.

00:08However, in the last few weeks in particular

00:10misinformation has been rife and it's caused some big situations.

00:13In the case of Algerian boxer Iman Khalif, the misinformation was that she'd been born a male.

00:17None of those rumors were correct.

00:19Iman Khalif was born as a woman and will now have the pleasure of fighting for a gold medal in the Olympics.

00:23But more prominently for Brits, misinformation was spread about the identity of the Southpaw attacker who killed three and injured ten last week.

00:30News was reported that the perpetrator was an immigrant, which is untrue,

00:33but has led to rioting. X, formerly known as Twitter, has been at the epicenter of both these situations with Steven Yaxley-Lennon

00:39organizing and distributing some information about these riots from a sun lounger in Cyprus.

00:44Now questions have been asked for a long time about how we can make sure that the information spread on social media is accurate.

00:50So is it time for the government to implement stricter regulation?

00:53Either way, be careful what you post and be careful what you believe if you're looking at it on social media.

00:57Manchester World, I'm Theo Hewson-Best.

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