False Information, Fraudulent materials, Old News, Sloppy Reporting, Lies, Click Bait-y Headlines, Satire, Parody, Propaganda, Post truth- the Wild World of Fake News.
Fake news are stories that seemed true, but are actually downright false. Information that cannot be verified, without sources, and possibly invented materials. These deliberately manufactured stories are intended to make people believe something that is untrue, vote for a certain candidate, support a political or religious agenda or to buy a certain product.
Recently Fake news is getting a lot of media attention, thanks to the way we produce and consume information. Online News is much more popular than TV News and the majority of the people are getting their news online.
The sad part is that people don’t check the source of the material that they view online or social media before they share it. Eye-popping headlines in their social media feeds make it easier for people to share its contents even without reading it or verifying it or evaluating it. So the fake news spreads quickly & often “go viral”. People are searching online for information that confirms their beliefs. This information bias makes them share materials without proper vetting.
How to avoid fake news:
• Develop a critical mindset. Do not consume everything you come across. Think objectively. Is this sounds suspicious or sounds too good to be true? Is this an opinion or a fact? Is this satire or parody? There are a lot of people making a living posting fake news & satire online designed to encourage clicks, and generate money for the creator through ad revenue.
• Evaluate information: Accuracy, Author, Objective, etc. Pay attention to the quality of writing. Is there spelling mistakes, ALL CAPS, or more punctuations????!!!!
• Look at the domain name and the URL: Fake news outfits mimic top-level domain names of major news organizations with slight variations.
• Look at the date and see when it was written. Old news is often recycled as new to confuse the reader.
• Check who else is reporting the story. Is it picked up or covered by major news organizations, like AP, Reuters, BBC, CNN? These major News Organizations have their own mechanism to check and verify stories before they publish it, broadcast it.
• Do a fact check. There are a lot of resources available online to check the facts. APFactcheck; International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN); FactCheck.org; Snopes.com, The Poynter Institute, etc. You can read top news stories from the Right, Center and the Left of the political spectrum side by side on AllSides. Also, Media Literacy Educational organizations have great resources available to assist you to analyze, evaluate, create & access media content.
In the digital age, where information is vital, it is most important to sort fact from fiction.
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