Understanding and Identifying Fake News
Overview
One thing that most people agree about: disinformation can be a huge problem! But, how do we know what is "fake news" and what is real? This is becoming more difficult because computer generated technologies are becoming more sophisticated and can generate fake images and videos that look like the real deal. Social media accounts can also be fake, so that "friend" whose content you comment on or "like," may actually be a computer program or bot. The short videos and materials on this page are intended to provide tools for exploring what we mean by "fake news,” understanding why it is harmful, learning how to identify fakes and trustworthy sources, and undertsanding the technology that can trick us on social media.
Topics:
What is fake news?
Additional resources for understanding what is "fake news", disinformation, and misinformation:
- Stony Brook University has a useful guide to understanding different categories of fake news and "red flags" for what makes a story likely to be fake.
"Us" vs. "Them": How can social media divide us?
Additional resources on how fake news can be harmful:
Identifying fake news
Additional resources for identifying fake news:
- Practice identifying fake news stories and sources with the game Facticious (you can select from middle school, high school, or college level examples)!
- Play the pandemic version of Facticious to see if you can distinguish real from fake stories about COVID-19.
Understanding and identifying fake images and videos: Tricky technology
Additional resources for learning about fake images and deep fake videos:
- Get more practice distinguishing computer generated images from real ones at whichfaceisreal.com
How can we stop the spread of fake news?
Additional resources for identifying bias and believing responsibly
- All Sides Media is a website that shows how different media outlets from across the political spectrum are covering certain stories to understand how the same story might be reported in different ways.
- Check out how different print, TV, and online news sources have been analyzed for bias (political slant) and accuracy by using the The Ad Fontes Interactive Media Bias Chart. Ad Fontes (Latin for "to the source" uses a a politically diverse team of analysts to analyze sources and content using rigorous, reproducible, methods.
- You can investigate a claim or story at Factcheck.org, a non-partisian, non-profit consumer advocate site. FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.