Fake News ~ Real or Not in the Social Imagination?

          Stopping the proliferation of fake news isn't just the responsibility of the platforms used to spread it. Those who consume news also need to find ways of determining if what they're reading is true. The idea is that people should have a fundamental sense of media literacy. Sam Wineburg, a professor of education and history at Stanford and the lead author of the study, said that a solution is for readers to read like fact checkers. Really?

Knowing that social reality is only information shared among individuals who collectively make up a group of people sharing that information gaining from it an identity - who they are and are not... should already tell you that reality is what we (as an individual in a group) socially agree is and is not real depending on our sphere of shared information.

You know, Charles H. Cooley said that even an 'imaginary' person in our life in our mind in our 'group' as Me, myself and I is as real as any 'person' can be.  After all, according to Cooley all reality exists in the mind. So, in that case what is really real and including what we consider news as in news worthy as in being important to our 'social imagined reality'. Imagined does not mean 'fake'. We imagine collectively and that imagination is what creates our social reality.

So, if you think that there are fact checkers who will check the news for you be mindful that the fact checkers you choose are those whom you accept in our social imagination that will concur with your social imagination. It always comes down to who you are and are not.. and that includes the facts or so called facts out there that you chose from or chose to justify your social imagination - your social reality!

 ~ Source:  http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/12/05/503581220/fake-or-real-how-to-self-check-the-news-and-get-the-facts