Spread of Misinformation: Inevitable

While reading the article "Misinformation and the Currency of Democratic Competency" I agree that "people are not uninformed... but misinformed". The problem of obtaining information is that we never completely know how accurate and trustworthy the information may be causing people to form wrong and inaccurate beliefs. One of the reasons for the obtaining of inaccurate information is the result of the overwhelming amount of information a citizen is expected to know. The amount of detail and precision that almost seems ridiculous to know. Why is there an obsession to know so much? The citizen is overwhelmed with responsibility to acquire as much information as they can in order to be seen as a rounded citizen. The acquiring of information is not the only burden but also the responsibility of the citizen to detect misinformation. Most of the time, people hold firm beliefs without ever knowing that they have been misinformed. This is often the case and produces inconsistent preferences, "inferences and judgments".

The difficulty of halting misinformation is quite complex and impossible. People will always be influenced by the media, politicians, and other authorities to form their beliefs. It is difficult to weed out misinformation when there is so much information and media to provide them. Once a person formulates their beliefs with the information they consider accurate it is quite difficult to change them in the future. This is not to say that there is no hope, but it takes time to change beliefs and accept them as true when realizing that our beliefs were not accurate in the first place.

Overall, I believe the media has a major influence over the spread of information. Therefore if the media were more honest with their information there would be less spread of misinformation. The media has now become more of a business and entertainment industry than an information center. This business like industry only causes information to be skewed and biased. Obtaining information is quite stressful because we never know whether the information we get is trustworthy. Information is necessary but not at the cost of inaccuracy!