Does Fake News Mislead the Public?

To start, when I was reading these articles I saw a glimpse of last week’s readings in terms of contradiction. On the side of Julia Fox she compares The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and broadcasting network news coverage. I thought the evaluation of the two would be interesting but when I saw the findings I thought to myself, why would she put that in her argument? According to the results the study “found Stewart’s program to be just as substantive as the broadcast networks’ campaign coverage, regardless of whether the story or the program was used as the unit of analysis” (183). The study also showed that viewers tend to remember this sort of comical information as apposed to regular broadcasting and are more likely to encode more of the information presented to them on shows like The Daily Show.

What I liked from Hollander’s point of view was his insight into the question about how much is “actually learned from entertainment television” (192). I also his comment about how there are many other factors that do influence one’s “processing strategies and information processing” (192). These include things “such as political sophistication, cognitive ability, and motivation” (192). I suppose I am most looking forward to discussing this in class today. I thought Fox momentarily buried herself in her argument and I enjoyed Hollander’s point of view but since The Daily Show isn’t the best example of fake news since it was proven to have the same amount of substantive information I am left undecided at this moment.