Jon Bon Jovi isn’t dead. If you were on social media on Monday, though, you might have heard otherwise. A rumor started circulating about Bon Jovi’s death. But, like so many other death rumors that run crazy on social media, it wasn’t true. And Bon Jovi went so far as to post a photo proving he was alive.
I always find it fascinating to learn where these rumors start, and this one was from a fake press release. In today’s world of news it’s pretty easy for someone to start a rumor that quickly becomes truth to some people. It’s why we all need to examine the source of any news and use a little news literacy. Take nothing at face value unless it’s coming from a trusted news source, and even then we’ve seen some fooled by a fake news story.
In this case, the “news” was posted on an unknown WordPress blog that wasn’t even filled out properly. Plus it was the only item posted on the blog at that time. If you clicked on the “about” page, there was no information there on who was posting this information about Bon Jovi’s death. All are giant red flags to me that this is fake.
There are plenty of questions that need to be weighed when you’re analyzing if something is true or not. Is this news source reliable? What does their about page say about them? What other news have they posted? Do people I trust for news trust them? I also do a quick Google News search if I see something posted on social media without a link to try to confirm if something is true. I also analyze the people who are posting the information on Twitter in the same way I would analyze a news site — who are they, where do they work and how could they have this information?
There always will be people who just retweet information without confirming it or analyzing it, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t check the sources and weigh the truth of the news. Heck, I even check things my parents send me. There always will be people out there spreading fake news and trying to trick people. Don’t be tricked.
I think this (http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/people-that-thought-lil-kim-died) is a perfect example of a head-on collision between ignorance and viral social media!
Another good example. I forgot about that one.