Fact or Fiction? Deciphering Fake News on the Internet

With the advent of social media and its rise and dominance as the go-to source for information on just about any topic, one of the unfortunate bi-products of the ability for anyone and everyone to publish has been creditability of the writer, expertise on the subject they are writing about, and the writer’s ability to research and vet their sources. 

Sadly, there now exists a growing library of case studies that document news reports featuring ‘fake’ content sourced from social media, including ‘Photoshopped’ pictures following the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, fake photographs of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the identification of innocent people as suspects following attempts to ‘crowdsource’ the capture of the Boston Marathon bomber in 2013.

To combat this rise in ‘fake news’ postings more and more journalists, bloggers, and avid social media users are turning to training and other methods (i.e. fact-checking sites) to test the validity of a news story to determine it level of truthfulness. There is even a group of researchers in Europe that are developing a ‘Truthmeter’ that automatically scores the journalistic credibility of social media contributors in order to inform overall credibility assessments.

Others like Huffington post have created things like the infographic below and even libraries, like Tacoma Community College have pages dedicated to resources to help people determine if a news story is real or fake. While libraries are not a fact-checking service. Through guide(s), TCC librarians provide instruction, resources, and tips for students, and others to practice fact-checking, evaluating sources, and detecting media bias for themselves.

Training ourselves to snuff out real from fake news, especially from a journalistic viewpoint, is vitally important to the health and well-being of the internet as well as the journalistic process. See another reason why fact-checking is important to the journalistic process and the public at large in the video below from MediaSverige in Sweden about an actual event that happened because over 43,000 decided not to fact-check a story on social media.

 

References

MediaSverige. (2016). Fact Checking Online is More Important Than Ever. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryjpu-NWYm8

Fletcher, R., Schifferes, S., & Thurman, N. (2020). Building the ‘Truthmeter’: Training Algorithms to Help Journalists Assess the Credibility of Social Media Sources. Convergence, 26(1), 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517714955

Robbins-Early, N. (2016). How To Recognize A Fake News Story: 9 Helpful Tips to Stop Yourself From Sharing False Information. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fake-news-guide-facebook_n_5831c6aae4b058ce7aaba169?section=politics

Tacoma Community College. (2022). Fake News, Fact-checking, and Bias: How to Check for Facts, Bias, and Fake News. Retrieved from https://tacomacc.libguides.com/c.php?g=599051&p=4147190