Spotting Fake News
How to Search Like a Scholar: Last Update- September 2020
Why Are We Hearing So Much About Fake News?
The Scope of the Fake News Problem (Spoiler Alert: It's Bad.)
Takeaways from article:
- Most middle school students can't tell native ads from articles.
- Most high school students accept photographs as presented, without verifying them.
- Many high school students couldn't tell a real and fake news source apart on Facebook.
- Most college students didn't suspect potential bias in a tweet from an activist group.
- Most Stanford students couldn't identify the difference between a mainstream and fringe source.
- 44% of adults report getting the bulk of their current events knowledge from Facebook
How Does Fake News Spread?
Cognitive Biases
IMPLICIT BIAS: "Implicit bias refers to the idea that as humans we have a tendency to group people into categories. We are inclined to trust people we consider a member of our own group more than those of a different group. The word implicit indicates that it is a bias that influences us without our knowing it."
CONFIRMATION BIAS: "Confirmation bias refers to our tendency to seek out information that confirms what we already know or believe to be true. We are likely to believe “facts” that conform to our beliefs. More startling, we may actually turn a blind eye to facts that contradict our beliefs. We usually think of seeing as believing, but in this case, we don’t see what we don’t already believe."
Where do your news sources rate on the bias graph?
What You Can Do To Spot Fake or Manipulated News
Understand These Terms
BRANDED CONTENT: Branded Content may seem more like entertainment, but it is really creative video advertising. Branded content focuses more on getting an emotional response from the audience rather than the product itself. Examples of successful branded content include The Lego Movie, Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty and Proctor and Gamble's #LikeAGirl campaign. Branded content is meant to provide information, but be careful-- advertisements may be just hiding around the corner.
NATIVE ADVERTISING: Native Advertising can be tricky because the format matches the style of the platform that you are viewing, but its goal is to direct you to a product. Most of these articles are labeled as advertising but you need to be on top of your game to make sure that you are not being duped by them.
DEEP FAKE: Deep Fakes are a form of synthetic media in which AI technology is used to replace the words and images of one video with another. Because of technological advancements, deep fakes are becoming more difficult to spot. A famous deep fake was created of a video of Nancy Pelosi to make her appear impaired.
Want to know more? Watch How Deep Fakes May Influence the 2020 Election.
Avoid Using Articles with These Labels
- Sponsored Content
- Ads by Google
- Paid Post
- Written FOR
- Recommended for You
- Content from the Web
- Promoted by (fill in company name here)
Fact-check
- RumorGuard-- Mrs. Smith's new favorite fact-checker
- Politifact
- FactCheck.org
- Washington Post Fact Checker
- Snopes
- Truth be Told
- NPR Fact-Check
- Guardian Reality Check
- AllSides
- Truth of Fiction?
- OpenSecrets
- ProPublica
Which One is Legit?
Examples of Parody and Satire News Sites
Use the CARS Method
Evaluation Tools for Online Sources
If You Want to Learn More...
Sources
Brown, Damon, “How to Choose Your News.” TED-Ed, 5 June 2014, youtu.be/q-Y-z6HmRgI.
Fillucci, Sierra. “How to Spot Fake News (and Teach Kids to Be Media-Savvy).” Common Sense Media, Common Sense Media Education, 16 Nov. 2016,
www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/how-to-spot-fake-news-and-teach-kids-to-be-media-savvy.
Greenwood, Shannon. “Majority Say Fake News Has Left Americans Confused about Basic Facts.” Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, Pew Research Center, 14 Dec. 2016, www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing-confusion/pj_2016-12-15_fake-news_0-01/#.
Jacobson, Linda. “The Smell Test.” School Library Journal, Jan. 2017, pp. 24–28.
“Fake News: Why We Fall For It.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, Dec. 2016, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/contemporary-psychoanalysis-in-action/201612/fake-news-why-we-fall-it.
Tavlin, Noah, “How False News Can Spread.” TED-Ed, 27 Aug. 2015, youtu.be/cSKGa_7XJkg.
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