How to Spot Fake News on Social Media
The news is getting more troubling with wildfires in Australia , earthquakes in Puerto Rico and the situation with a powder keg in Iran , and it’s just the last few days. With the flow of terrifying world events, it’s easy to find yourself crawling social media and panicking. Words like “BREAK” (especially in capitals) and disturbing images can grab our attention, but it is more important than ever to understand where the information we read is coming from. Before accepting something as fact or sharing it yourself, here’s how to distinguish fake news from legitimate news on social media.
Check link
When you see a post from a dubious account that supposedly contains the latest news, check if the source has a link to the news. Earlier this week, NBC journalist Brandy Zadrozny tweeted screenshots of two fake hot news accounts:
If “news” is published without linking to a news article from a reputable source, this should be immediately alarming. Do a little digging before accepting these messages as being close to reality, and definitely don’t perpetuate a cycle of misinformation by sharing a message with your own followers.
Make sure the news site is reliable
Of course, everyone has their own favorite newspaper, network, or website to keep abreast of current events – probably those that fit your personal political views. It’s one thing to point out Fox News’ conservatism, but as former Lifehacker writer Eric Ravencraft wrote in 2016 , there is a difference between sites with political bias and sites that completely fabricated information.
The rest of his article contains other pointers to detecting fake news sites, including satirical sites that are mistaken for fact, checking the facts of poorly covered news articles on legitimate news sites, and seeking evidence to corroborate allegations. …
Use the SIFT method
It takes a little work to be a responsible consumer and media distributor. If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to figuring out the legality of an account or site, you can try the SIFT method created by Mike Caulfield , director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University in Vancouver, which he describes on his Information Literacy site. Hapgood . In a July 19, 2019 post, he explains that in order to separate “truth from fiction and everything in between,” you can give people a list of what to do by looking at the source.
Here’s how to sift :
Stop: When faced with a new piece of potential information, Caulfield encourages us to stop for two reasons. First, he says we should pause to find out if we know the site or source and its reputation. Otherwise, we may have to rely on other steps in this process. The second reason we should stop is that if you’re trying to figure out that the news is fake, focus on the task at hand, rather than falling down the rabbit hole and wasting time on tasks that are only indirectly related to yours. original question.
Research the Source: According to Caulfield, we need to know what we are reading before we waste time reading it. That doesn’t mean you have to start a full investigation of the news organization, the journalist and everyone they interviewed for the article, but pay attention to their experience and agenda, he says.
Find Reliable Coverage: If there is a specific statement in an article or video that really interests or intrigues you, Caulfield suggests ignoring the news source and digging through the posts and analysis instead to figure out where the claim came from. He offers an example like this:
If you get an article that says the koalas have just been declared extinct by the Koala Rescue Foundation, you might be better off not researching the source, but looking for the best source on the topic, which you can importantly scan several sources and see what it looks like. expert consensus. In these cases, we recommend that you “find another coverage” that better suits your needs — more reliable, more detailed, or maybe just more varied. In lesson two, we’ll show you a few tricks to do this kind of thing very quickly.
This, of course, does not mean that you have to agree with the consensus, but Caulfield argues that understanding the history and context of the claim can help us in our assessment and can be a starting point for further investigation.
Track claims, quotes, and media back to their original context: Rather than blindly relying on how an issue or news event is portrayed in one particular article or news report, Caulfield recommends tracking any statements, quotes, or media used in an article (e.g. videos, podcasts, etc.) back to the original source. This will allow you to see information in its original context and then make an informed decision about how it was presented in the original article you are reading.