President Putin releases 800 tigers and 500 lions to enforce quarantine rules.
Introduction:
Since November 2019 the world had to face a terrible and unknown virus: COVID-19.
Every country had similar plans to overcome the pandemic. They finally declared a state of emergency, and the quarantine plan was developed. Some people took it seriously from the beginning, and they followed all the given rules in order to reduce the spread of this dangerous virus. However, some did not, especially younger people. On March 22nd,2020 this post was shared on Facebook, and immediately after the first share, it became “breaking news” on other social media as well. According to the post, the Russian President Vladimir Putin released 800 tigers and 500 lions to reinforce the quarantine for those who were not respecting the law.
This was shared on Twitter, and it had a lot of comments from people who believed it! Others claimed they were not surprised at all by this action taken from the Russian president.
In addition to the previous Twitter post, people kept on modifying the article, and more posts like this were found. Parodies were created, and as you can see in the image, President Donal Trump was supporting the decisions and actions adopted by Vladimir Putin of releasing the 800 tigers and the 500 lions in the streets. Also, in this last Twitter post, you can see the size of “not” when the author claims “This is NOT a joke”. He is definitively trying to make us believe that it is a true fact. The size of that specific word will draw more attention, and eventually get more shares on multiple platforms. Nevertheless, the news turned out to be fake after the first shares, and with a little bit more of research the truth began to come out.
Consequently, this image was shared on the web. As you can notice this time there is a big red circle saying “FAKE”. Again, this visual rhetoric now is trying to capture the attention of the audience trying to make them understand that all of the information shared previously was not accurate.
This simple and informative article by Kate Lewis states that it is absolutely fake news. As claimed by multiple articles on the internet, this was a picture taken on April 15, 2016.
K. Lewis addresses us on this page from the daily mail. The picture was taken in Johannesburg, which is the largest city in South Africa. This lion is named Columbus; He was supposed to be part of a movie that was being recorded at the time, and he was borrowed from a lion park.
It is incredible how powerful social media could be, and the way that it could be used might be pretty dangerous sometimes. Sharing information like this during a pandemic might cause a variety of emotions among the population. In moments like these, we should be supporting each other, and the internet could be a great resource, particularly during a global pandemic and months of quarantine. Moreover, we need to research and verify sources before sharing any information. Please let’s all make sure we have substantiated sources!
