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How Far Have Celebrity Death Hoaxes Gone? The Reality about Fake News

How would you feel if you would wake up one day and open the computer to see the news of your own death? Not funny, right? Well, celebrities have to endure this multiple times a year or even more often. The number of celebrities who have been “put to sleep” by media in the last year is astonishing. Why are journalists doing this and why do we love to read about celebrity deaths?

Death is money

There are many people who choose to use a celebrity’s name to boost their site’s traffic. And some of them are going that extra mile and claim that popular celebrities are dead. Among the people who were killed by the press are Miley Cyrus, Adam Sandler and even Queen Elizabeth II. Among all the hoaxes and spreading fake news, there are some other websites which do the fact checking and try to fight the hoaxes like Dead or Kicking, which tells who is dead and who is alive plus some information about celebrities’ death to support the claim.

Sometimes, we see three death hoaxes per week.

These fake news show up on any social media platform and are usually created from accounts which mimic a news magazine.

Using social media power to gain more traffic

Facebook and Google have a huge network power which enables fake news to spread like wildfire. Major sites also use content-recommendation engines, which allow fake news to spread even faster. When an attractive title, like Sylvester Stallone is dead appears on the screen, it’s tempting for everybody to click on it. Even if it leads to an unrelated ad, the title already was effective, because it convinced someone to check it out.

In many cases, celebrity death hoaxes are mixed with real content, which makes it hard for the user to understand which one is fake and which one is real.

An image is one thousand words

In the world of online advertising the image of a celebrity, especially one of a popular celebrity, increases the response rate of an ad. The user clicks on them, pushed by the desire to be the first one to read the news and share it with their friends.

These also have the power to take advantage of the people’s emotions. The user’s connection with the celebrity and their culture is what makes them click on the fake ad. For example, if you place a title about Miley Cyrus’s death on an online magazine dedicated to youth, the success of that fake ad is going to be high. However, if you place the same ad on a news site dedicated to adults aged 40-50, its success rate is going to be smaller, because the targeted users don’t respond emotionally to the culture represented by Cyrus.

The more fake news is being spread about a celebrity, the more time they spend to debunk the news. This means the celebrity is going to communicate more with their fans, which strengthens their connection. The next time fake death news appears, it will be even more powerful, because fans are more emotionally connected with the celebrity.

This is a fact that creating and spreading hoaxes on the net makes internet not a reliable resource for its users! If internet is not reliable, everybody will be suffered. Hope everybody does their share to make internet a trustworthy resource.