Rare Tick Found under Human Skin
Fake news multimodal essay by Azalea Gonzalez
Introduction
In around the early of May 2017, there was a viral Facebook post that read a warning of a new type of tick, which is a parasite arachnicide, that is found inside the skin. The post had a picture of what looked to be a tick crawling inside the skin and the post on top that read the following: “Brand New Rare Tick Warning-it immediately buried under your skin and makes its way undetected, moving along inside you without you even knowing. Found in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, Mess you up good”. As the post reads, it was then shared a lot on Facebook around 5:03 pm on May 4. However, from reading on what this Facebook post read, it is clear to see it is a piece of fake Misinformation news that has been spread on that social media platform.
Research Results
Upon close research examination about ticks in “HealthlinkBC”, ticks are tiny parasite bugs that are in exceedingly small size and feed on blood. Ticks can go on different animals to bite and feed on their blood; some also bite on people as well. Some ticks don’t result in diseases, “They are easiest to spot on a person when they are actually sucking blood. Ticks burrow partway into the skin, bite, draw blood, and then drop off. The feeding tick’s mouth will be under the skin, but the back parts will be sticking out” (healthlinkbc). Based on this quote above, it can be safely said that the bug is not able to go inside the skin, even though it is just feeding off the blood, ticks fall off the animal or person and just leave the body once it has brank enough blood. Therefore, proving the fact that the post is false news, and refuting the post to be real.
The claim of the Facebook post can also be easily refuted by the person that even made the post, Mychael Gallagher. Gallagher said that he posted this fake news on purpose to experiment on his two daughters demonstrating how fast false information can spread on social media. Gallagher said that the post is “100% false. It’s an experiment I did with my daughters. We wanted to see how fake news travels without anyone questioning it… I wasn’t trying to scare anyone, nor did I think it would get more than 100 shares. I purposely used photos that looked fake” (Palma). Gallagher used information from St. George news to disguise some of the information as his own to make the fake post. A picture taken on the internet in 2008 from a website called “SportFishWorld.com” shows a picture of a man that was bitten by a tick and not even showing the tick buried in the skin. Therefore, proving that the post was indeed misinformation as shown in the picture below.
To conclude, social media may have a lot of information that we can all look at and learn from it, but it can also be full of fake news and disinformation that people can make out of to either be recognized or for no reason. Even though Gallagher stated that his post of 50,000 shares was a fraud, no one even bothered to ask questions or even confront him about the post. When coming across news like this, it is best to look over the source and the information, to identify if the news is fake.
Sources
Tick Bites and Disease. HealthLinkBC, www.healthlinkbc.ca/healthlinkbc-files/tick-bites-disease#:~:text=Ticks%20live%20in%20tall%20grass,parts%20will%20be%20sticking%20out. Accessed 10 Mar. 2021.
Palma, Bethania. “Is There a New, Rare Tick That Burrows Under Your Skin Undetected?” Snopes, 23 May 2017, www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-tick-burrows.
