On 24 June 2019, the Jordan Media Institute (JMI) with the support of the French Embassy in Amman hosted the Director of France 24 TV channel, Mr. Marc Saikali, in a workshop titled "Content Verification on Social Media."
Many breaking news items are user-generated as people capture inaccurate content through their smartphone cameras the moment incidents occur, explained Saikali. He went on to elaborate how others quickly join the parade and start spreading and sharing this content with additions and modifications. This paves the path for news items to morph into something far from what the original piece was. These spread like wildfire worldwide and are reused out of context.
During the workshop, a documentary prepared by a specialized team at France 24 was presented clarifying the difference between real and fake news, which seem to almost convey the same message. This leads to difficulties in tracing them as they are based on real events and factual quotations. Mr. Saikali also pointed out the effect of biased news as a key factor in concealing and manipulating facts to serve different hidden agendas.
JMI Master’s students in Journalism and New Media joined Saikali in discussing how many social media users might fall for “clickbait” title traps, which assist the process of spreading fake news, along with the role played by search engine algorithms and social media in injecting the same fake news online.