How to Spot Fake News

4 Tips for Spotting a Fake News Story

by Christina Nagler

The last few years have been newsworthy, to say the least. An unprecedented American election, Brexit, earthquakes, and outbreaks all contributed to some of the most compelling news in recent memory.

But mixed in with all the fair, factual, and well-researched reporting was something more sinister: Fake news, stories that seemed accurate, but were actually downright false.

While fake news has been circulating as long as its legitimate counterpart, it's been getting a lot of play recently, thanks to the way we consume information. According to Pew Research Center, people under age 50 get half of their news online. And for those under 30, online news is twice as popular as TV news.

Speaking of the Internet, did you hear the one about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump or the Clinton campaign running a child sex trafficking ring out of a pizza parlor in Washington, DC, (#pizzagate)? Both fakes.

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WHY FAKE NEWS GOES VIRAL

Thousands of people circulated these false stories. Why? Perhaps because eye-popping headlines in our social media feeds make it easier for us to share content than evaluate or even read it. This creates a viral storm of sound bites without substance.

Another contributing factor, according to Pew Research, is confirmation bias. People are more likely to accept information that confirms their beliefs and dismiss information that does not.

But the result of all this misinformation isn’t simply ignorance. It can also provoke serious consequences.

In the case of #pizzagate, a man decided to “self-investigate” the child abuse allegations, arming himself with several weapons, arriving at the restaurant cited in the fake story, firing a shot (luckily without injury to anyone), and terrifying bystanders. In instances such as these, the stakes are too high not to get the facts straight.

If the last two years have been any indication, next year promises to be a doozy of a news year. So we need to defend ourselves against getting duped. Keeping track of good and bad news requires us, as readers, to do a little legwork. Here’s how:

Click HERE to hear me read this Why Fake News Goes Viral section.mp4

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LET’S GET CRITICAL: 4 TIPS FOR EVALUATING NEWS