Video from Factcheck.org
Know How To Spot Common Features of Fake News Articles
With practice, you can learn to recognize features of fake news articles such as: strange URLs; authors with a history of writing fake or misleading news; provocative or inflammatory headlines; article content that doesn’t reflect the headline; outdated information being presented as current information; lack of verifiable sources; poor grammar; and pictures or quotes that are untraceable.
Use the tips in the articles below to help you practice looking for these things. See the “Evaluating Sources” page of this guide for more tips.
If you have a Facebook account report any fake news you find in your feed, to encourage Facebook to block it. This article shows you how.
Fact-Checking Habits (from Mike Caulfield's Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers)
1. Look to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim.
Fact checkers research news stories and other information found on the internet to determine their accuracy. If you’re not sure whether the information you found is accurate, try using fact checking websites to help you in your research.
2. Go to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information.
If the claim is about:
3. If you're still not sure about its trustworthiness even after you found the original source, read what other people say about the source itself (publication, author, organization).
Look at what other sites say about the source. Try using Wikipedia to investigate the source... yes, you read that right, we recommend you use Wikipedia to investigate and begin the research process!
As Mike Caulfield writes, "While Wikipedia must be approached with caution, especially with articles that are covering contentious subjects or evolving events, it is often the best source to get a consensus viewpoint on a subject. Because the Wikipedia community has strict rules about sourcing facts to reliable sources, and because authors must adopt a neutral point of view, articles are often the best available introduction to a subject on the web" (6).
Still not sure about the truthfulness of the claim? FIND ANOTHER SOURCE!
Graphic provided by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). Last updated July 17, 2018.
This content was taken directly from Mike Caufield's open source book, Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers (2017, p. 3).
When you feel strong emotion — happiness, anger, pride, vindication — and that emotion pushes you to share a “fact” with others, STOP. Above all, it’s these things that you must fact-check.
Why? Because you’re already likely to check things you know are important to get right, and you’re predisposed to analyze things that put you an intellectual frame of mind. But things that make you angry or overjoyed, well… our record as humans are not good with these things.
An example found on a Twitter feed:
You don’t need to know that much of the background here to see the emotionally charged nature of this. President Trump had insulted Chuck Schumer, a Democratic Senator from New York, saying tears that Schumer shed during a statement about refugees were “fake tears”. This tweet reminds us that that Senator Schumer’s great grandmother died at the hands of the Nazis, which could explain Schumer’s emotional connection to the issue of refugees.
Or does it? Do we actually know that Schumer’s great-grandmother died at the hands of the Nazis? And if we are not sure this is true, should we really be retweeting it?
Our normal inclination is to ignore verification needs when we strongly react to content, and researchers have found that content that causes strong emotions (both positive and negative) spreads the fastest through our social networks. Savvy activists and advocates utilize this flaw of ours, getting past our filters by posting material that goes straight to our heart.
Building new habits requires that we identify “pegs” on which to hang those habits. So use your emotions as a reminder — as a trigger for your fact-checking habit. If every time content you want to share makes you feel rage, or laughter, or ridicule, or, sorry to say, a heartwarming buzz — spend 30 seconds fact-checking you’ll do pretty well.
See What Emotion Goes Viral the Fastest? by Matthew Shaer.