Do you know what a hoax is?

This type of message is created to achieve objectives such as:

• Create sources of hatred against other religions, regions of countries, races, cultures, ideologies, etc...
• Increase social alarm about kidnappings, robberies and attacks
• Make messages to promote the disuse of food and products made with harmful substances
• Discredit people, brands, companies, political parties and products
• commit fraud

Sure you may wonder why you need to know this information if you are in the field of digital marketing. Keep reading and you will find out.

beware of hoaxes

When we are in front of this type of news or alerts, we can feel tempted to share it and create what is known as a “snowball”. An act that can gradually destroying the trust that our followers have in us.  If this situation were to occur, it is necessary to have a contingency plan at hand, in addition to a crisis management manual with steps to take to assume responsibility and take the appropriate actions to eliminate this type of situation in the future.

How can I protect myself from them?

Ideally, you should meet with your work team and that you choose to create a monitoring network in order to know what is happening in the networks. If the content has already been disseminated by your brand, you must delegate to a work group the development of material alluding to the subject to make it known that you made a mistake.

You already know what to do if you fall into the trap, but how to avoid it? Now open your eyes and check all the information that comes to you through various channels.

Tips to recognize a hoax

We have already talked about the concept and the measures you can take in case you send a hoax by mistake, now we will give you a list of characteristics that this type of content has, so you can identify them more easily.

• Image alluding to the topic to seek credibility. This is a way to support the content because it presents you with proof of it.

• excess capitalization. In previous lines we mentioned that the purpose of the hoax is to attract attention and using many consecutive capital letters is one way to do it.

• There are no citable sources. Although this type of content comes from a person, we do not have the necessary information to be able to track it, that is, as much as we search the web, we will not find a news that supports the content of the deception.

• reverse advertising. We are complex people and when we receive a message that tells us not to do something, our desire to do what is forbidden grows. People who engage in this type of activity know the effect of this format and use it, so it is common to read phrases such as: do not read or share it so that other people find out.

• Catastrophe that you can avoid if you multiply the message. Even if you feel that we are talking about a horror trailer, it is part of the fake content. It is recurrent to read phrases like: if you don't send this message to x number of people it will pass (and here they indicate the punishment), or help us spread what is happening at this moment in a certain place.

• Use of technical words. As if it were a scientific text, by using technical terms, an attempt is made to give credibility to the spread news.

We hope that this article will be useful to you when you receive a hoax in your inbox or as a chain in any of the social networks. The best solution will always be to verify any type of news before spreading it and, when it is false, delete it. Remember that, thanks to technology and globalization, information wields greater power in digital communities, it is up to us to become aware of and be responsible for what we share with our audiences.