Celebrity Death Hoaxes

Introduction

A story found on Twitter that was posted February 23rd in 2015 stated that famous musical artist Beyoncé had passed away in a massive car accident. The first post was made by a random twitter user which stated “I’m bout to get this trending… #RIPBeyonce.” This post was then taken by a news account which at first sight, looks like it would be connected to CNN. The post included the text “BREAKING NEWS: BEYONCE WAS INVOLVED IN A HORRIFIC CAR CRASH! #RIPBeyonce” The post is also accompanied by an image of a car that has exploded into flames on the side of the road. When first seen, this post looks like it is actually from CNN which would make any viewer worry for Beyoncé. However, with extended research, one will quickly find that this story, along with many other celebrity death announcements, is fake.

Research Results

Searching #RIPBeyonce on Google results in many articles debunking Beyoncé’s death. One of these articles can be found on Snopes, a trusted website when it comes to establishing the validity of news. A long list of celebrities have been pronounced dead when in reality they are still continuing on with life without the knowledge that thousands of people think they have passed. Some of the people on this list include Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Michael Jordan, and Taylor Swift. All of these “deaths” can be proven false with a quick search of the celebrities name followed by death.

Many fake news sources love posting a celebrity’s death due to the large amount of attention it receives. These news outlets know that when they choose a celebrity with a massive following, they are going to receive the most views and shares. The easiest way to prevent falling for a fake celebrity death is to either wait for more information on the death or perform a quick Google search tying to the celebrity and their death and look at results from trusted news sources.

As for the image, many fake news sources will use either an edited photo or an old photo from a previous accident. They do this to further trick viewers into believing that the death actually happened so more people are likely to click on their article. In this case, through image searching, the image can be traced to an old photo of the actual car accident that celebrity Paul Walker was in when he died in 2013.

Since the dawn of social media, social media has been used as an outlet for sharing with friends, family, and others all around the world. This leads to many people being able to share news with everybody. The danger to this comes when people are spreading fake information in order to gather clicks and views. Many people will share this fake information with all of their friends and family. Everybody should be careful with everything they read on the internet and they should be able to know what websites to trust when trying to figure out if news is fake. In the case of celebrity deaths, it is incredibly easy to determine if a death is real or fake.

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