How to Stay Aware in the Age of Fake News

By George Nolting on March 24, 2017

Image courtesy of Mother Jones

Fake news has been a very popular topic lately. Turn on MSNBC or Fox News and you’ll probably hear the term mentioned at least once. Donald Trump constantly drops the term on his Twitter tirades when referring to CNN. If you’ve been involved with a Facebook debate, chances are that someone has responded, “That’s fake news” to a link someone else has shared.

But what exactly is fake news? If the name isn’t already a giveaway, fake news is the intentional spreading of hoaxes created with the purpose of being mistaken as real news. Mostly, this is done in order to increase web traffic or push specific political agendas.

There’s no doubt fake news has an extremely dangerous impact. In Washington D.C., a man fired off an assault rifle in a pizzeria, prompted by a conspiracy theory that members of the Democratic Party ran a pedophile ring beneath various pizzerias. Furthermore, the United States Intelligence Community has officially concluded that the Russian government had at least attempted to interfere with the 2016 Presidential Election by planting fake news stories.

So how are you supposed to stay politically aware when fake news seems to be everywhere? I have listed a number of simple steps you can take in order to analyze the news you read and how you can pick out what stories are trustworthy and what stories aren’t.

Understand that everything you read is biased to some degree

The first step in being a savvy reader is realizing that everything you read is going to have some kind of bias. Bias is a layer of prejudice that affects how people behave and interact. Many news sources have at least a little bias leaning toward a conservative or liberal viewpoint. This affects what news stories they will focus on and what kind of messages they will interpret from these stories. Fox News, for example, tends to have a conservative bias, and therefore reports the news in a way that favors a conservative viewpoint. Huffington Post, on the other hand, has a liberal bias.

Most people will tell you that you should avoid news sources that are too heavily biased, and they’re right. But, there’s really no way to avoid it completely. Even the most trustworthy news sources have some kind of message. That doesn’t mean those news stories are invalid, it simply means that what they’re saying has been at least somewhat shaped by their own opinions. But understanding that bias exists in everything is important in order to begin engaging in critical thinking, which is a necessary tool for fighting fake news.

Use more than one news source

Before sharing a news story, you should check to see if there are other news sources reporting on the same incident. Comparing different reports helps paint a clearer picture of what actually happened. If they all mention the same chain of events as your first article, that’s almost definitely a guarantee that your original source is being truthful. On the other hand, if you’ve been sharing fake news, you probably won’t be able to find anything else that supports your claims.

Read the article in full

You’d think this would be a given, but a surprising amount of people will share an article after only reading the headline. An interesting title is an important part of a good story, but many fake news stories heavily rely on exaggerated and sensationalized headlines that twist the truth, all for the sake of gathering web traffic. This is commonly referred to as “clickbait.”

The easiest way to avoid falling for clickbait is to simply read the whole article. Make sure you understand what’s being said in the body paragraphs, not just the title. This way, you can examine the validity of the claims the article is making for yourself. In many cases, the story itself won’t be nearly as interesting as the title makes it out to be.

Check the sources the article provides

The vast majority of news stories will provide links to other sources. This includes interviews, scholarly journals, and older news stories. It’s a good idea to investigate these sources as well, using the same methods listed above. A trustworthy article will provide plenty of equally trustworthy sources. A not-so-trustworthy article will either rely on a small network of other fake news websites in order to provide “sources” or will pull out nonsensical conclusions that their sources don’t support.

Some fake news sites don’t use sources at all. A story needs to be able to provide research and proof for the information they’re sharing; otherwise, their information is nothing more than opinions.

Use Snopes.com to fact check

Image courtesy of Snopes.com

When reading the news, your greatest ally is going to be Snopes.com. Snopes is a website dedicated to investigating rumors, myths, and various other pieces of information floating around the internet. They go into incredible detail in order to examine what being spread around social media is actually true.

If one of your friends shares an article with a particularly outrageous claim, your first response should be to head right over to Snopes.com to verify. Chances are that the truth isn’t exactly what the article makes it out to be. At best, the article may be an exaggeration. At worst, it will be an outright fabrication.

Check to see if it’s disputed by Facebook

Image courtesy of John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) on Twitter

This one goes hand-in-hand with the previous step. Facebook is currently in the process of adding a new feature called “Disputed Content” that will help weed out fake news. What happens is that whenever a friend shares an article with information disputed by fact-checking websites like Snopes.com or Associated Press, Facebook will flag it with a notification that lets other people know this, and will link them to these resources in order to provide more depth.

As of now, the feature is still fairly new and has yet to be implemented in full. Some Facebook users have yet to see the “Disputed Content” warning pop up. Once the tool is completed, however, it will hopefully save you the step of having to do the intense research yourself.

The best way to fight fake news is to develop a critical and conscious mind. While this list probably won’t prevent fake news stories from being created or shared, it has hopefully encouraged you to browse and research more effectively.

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