Diego Diaz

Mr. Stro

ERWC Period [1]

10 January 2024

SPEP: Scholarship Essay

Original Essay

[Fake News Essay]

Write the essay’s prompt (recreate to the best of your ability) here:

the affects of fake news and how it can mislead many people to thinking the wrong thing.

Studied cases of fake news articles and the impact they had on society and even politicians.

To the best of your knowledge, what scores did you earn on this essay? If you can’t

remember the scores, what were some of the things you struggled with in this essay? What

needs to be improved?

My score on this essay was pretty bad being that it was one of my first essays since I joined this

school. I struggled a lot trying to think of things to say. It was hard for me to look for words that

fit with what I was trying to say so the paragraph was well structured.

Revised Essay
Type your revised essay in this section. Make sure to highlight in yellow the changes you

made from the original. These should be significant, meaningful changes, not just changes

to grammar.

Various articles and researchers state “AI cannot resolve the problem of fake
news.(Cathy O’Neil. Social Dilema)” This being because “fact checking will never be an
entirely reliable method of eliminating fake news and providing the user with fair
balanced information. (Andrea F. 5.)”.

1.
Researchers say “A lot of these fake news stories are published on social media
platforms . The headlines of these are meant to get the reader's attention. If you are not
sure about this article or document, check the comments… fake stories or misleading
stories usually generate a lot of comments on facebook and twitter.” (Melissa Z. Alexios
M. 17.). This helps fake news spread, easily influencing those who don’t know how to
differentiate between fake News and Real articles, written by actual journalists or people
with credible sources are more eligible to consume those fake articles. This may
discredit someone’s work, just as it affects one person it can affect companies, for
example “google, facebook and twitter faced pressure to check the spread of fake
news, an issue which catapulted into the spotlight during the US presidential
elections” (Weston W. 2)

#1
Fake news is recognized as a threat to democracy which means “power of the
people” also recognized as a way of governing which depends on the will of the people.
With the growth of fake news and it being more easily accessible by social media, this
can affect numerous people by misinforming themselves and later speaking about what
they recently learned. Just as people can be affected by this problem, countries can
also be affected by the inability to recognize what news is real and what is fake. “if the
children are the future, the future might be very Ill-informed (Camila Domonoske. 25)”.
When thought about the future and how information can evolve throughout the years.
We can imagine how it might look if we notice how much the problem of fake news has
spreaded. Especially when “young people tended to credulously accept information as
presented even without supporting evidence or citations (Camila Domonoske. 9)”

#2
To prevent the spread of false information, “Google implemented a new tool to
fight the spread of misinformation on the web worldwide. The new fact checking
program labels dubious stories in users research results.(Weston W. 1.) “ With these
programs people are going to be easily guided into reading and learning
news/information that is viable and proved to be real by professionals. Thanks to these,
the spread of fake news can slowly decrease and real information can be consumed,
popularizing it again and being more accurate to the readers. Especially when Fact
checking organizations will provide the accuracy assessment for hesitant articles.
(Weston W. 10.)

#3
When looked at society as one, we can all start making a change to start reading
and informing ourselves with actual information. As Camila Domonoske stated, ”the
solution is to teach all internet users to read like fact checkers” (Domonoske 27.)”. Many
people have to recognize that we are also to blame. The immense amount of fake
information is due to people that don’t understand how to read articles which drives the
creation of more. A targeted audience for those who don’t know how to read these
articles and just consume them. “Stopping the proliferation of fake news isn’t just the
responsibility of the platforms used to spread it. Those who consume news also need to
find ways of determining if what they’re reading is true.” (Wynne Davis 4.)

#4 Conclusion
 The spread of fake news has reached a point where there’s more fake news than
actual news. Due to the fact that many people are not aware of these and then used as
viable sources. We need to teach people how to correctly identify fake news and
understand what sources should be used so we can inform people with actual news. “If
this happens or if you see your friends sharing blatantly fake news, be a friend and
kindly tell them it’s not real. (Wynne Davis 22.)”

Reflection

1st Paragraph: Write a paragraph explaining specifically what you revised in your essay and

why. Go into thoughtful details! How did these choices improve your essay? What skills do you

now have that you were able to use to help enhance your essay?

2nd Paragraph: Write a paragraph explaining how you’ve improved as a writer since your

freshman year: What did you struggle with before? What are you proud that you can do now?

I can see the flaws of my essay and understand my score. Many of the words used were very

repetitive, not leading anywhere and getting easily confused when read. At the moment I didn’t

notice it but now revising it I can notice it took my a while to get to the main point of the topic.

Right now, I see everything I can change to make it sound much clearer. I believe the citation

part of this project was pretty good. Good phrase selection to backup what I was trying to

inform.
This document was very difficult because I was used to one way of writing essays. Trying to

learn the new way of writing them has been a slow process because I haven’t done one like that

since. Taking a closer look at my work, I’m very unsatisfied with the results I had and the words

I used. If I keep writing and working on how I express certain topics I hopefully can achieve the

level of writing I want.