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Voting and Elections Guide

HOW TO SPOT FAKE NEWS

How to Spot Fake News infographic; text-based version available in document file below image.

"How to Spot Fake News." International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, World Library and Information Congress, 6 Mar. 2017, www.ifla.org/publications/node/11174. Infographic.

TIPS FOR EVALUATING THE NEWS

  1. When you open up a news article in your browser, open a second, empty tab.  Use that second window to look up claims, author credentials and organizations that you come across in the article.
  2. Fake news spans across all kinds of media - printed and online articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, radio shows, even still images. 
  3. For images, put them into Google images and search. Verify that what you are seeing corresponds to the event in question.
  4.  Check the account history of the source. Two red flags are: the number of posts and how long the account has been active. If it claims to be a well known source(like CNN or CBS) and only has a few posts in its history that is a clue. If it's a well known source and the account has only been active a short time that is another red flag.
  5. Think before you share.

FACT-CHECKING SITES

  • Snopes: Over twenty years later, Snopes.com has come to be regarded as an online touchstone of research on rumors and misinformation.
  • Know Your Meme: Know Your Meme is a site that researches and documents Internet memes and viral phenomena.
  • Politifact: PolitiFact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times to find the truth in politics.Every day, reporters and researchers from the Times examine statements by members of Congress, the president, cabinet secretaries, lobbyists, and more.
  • Factcheck.org: We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
  • Media Bias/Fact Check: the most comprehensive media bias resource on the internet. There are currently 2500+ media sources listed in our database and growing every day.

PLAY THIS GAME!

Image result for fact checking

How good are you at spotting fake news? Try this game and see!

 

CONFIRMATION BIAS

Image result for confirmation bias

Acknowledgement

This guide is used and has been adapted with the permission of Salem State University Library. For information about reusing the guide, please contact dstahura@salemstate.edu

 

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.