Example of erroneous social media post gone viral-yet is factually incorrect

Example of erroneous social media post gone viral-yet is factually incorrect

How efficient is social media in spreading viral-junk misinformation about the law? Well, the following post about Tuesday’s two-page Supreme Court ruling in Brakebill v. Jaeger, a case about voting procedures in North Dakota, has gotten more than 18,000 shares as of this morning:

Source: 18,000 Facebook shares later: a tale of legal misinformation | Overlawyered

The post contains 4 major errors. As noted by the blog author who dissembles the fake viral post,

Here’s a rule of thumb about social media: the more anger, the less accuracy.

Think about how that relates to our cultural of perpetual outrage, which itself is reinforced by widely-shared erroneous social media propaganda. The original post (see link above) appeals to the target’s fast acting System 1 thinking (of Kahneman’s work). Countering false viral memes requires facts and rational thinking – or System 2, which requires mental work to process. The consequence is that fake messages become enshrined as “facts”, even though they are not true at all.

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