Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Online Reaction to Fake Video of Michael Jackson

Shortly after Michael Jackson's death on June 25, a German broadcaster posted a fake video online supposedly showing Jackson leaving a coroner's van.

The video, which was posted on YouTube, was an experiment hoping to portray how viral propaganda is, especially on the Internet.

The video was on YouTube for one day and received 880,000 views.

Researchers wanted to discover how effortless it is to influence Internet users and what they believe to be fact vs. fiction.

And that is exactly what they found.

Many viewers believed the video to be real and were outraged once they found out the video was a hoax. This just goes to prove that people will believe almost anything they see, particularly on the Internet. Many people wanted to believe that Michael Jackson was still alive, though everyone knows that he is indeed dead. This also brings up that many people do have very strong faith in today's science--so much faith that they believe that it is possible for people to come back from the dead.

http://www.reformer.com/nation/ci_1324992

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