Fake news is on the rise, but here’ s how to spot it
With the rise of social media comes the uptick in “fake news” spread across the platforms.
“Fake news” is untrue or misleading information that is distributed as legitimate news.
Social media gives users the ability to generate their own content, which can be a positive contribution to journalism. On the other hand, the platforms could lend themselves to expanding the reach of un-checked facts from sources who did not verify information.
Another way digital outlets have contributed to the problem is through echo chambers. They are “using algorithms to deliver content that we are mostly likely to enjoy,” Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan said. This does not encourage readers to consume a broader selection of news, which narrows the sources they learn information from.
As fake news continues to travel across platforms, it propels even more inaccurate stories. According to PolitiFact, “fake news doesn’t easily die, either, instead morphing into new stories and propagating its own lies.”
This proved to be especially true during the 2016 Presidential Election. Google searches for “fake news” skyrocketed at the time.
It can become dangerous when audiences rely on un-checked information and make decisions based off of these stories.
As explained by Wardle and Derakhshan, fake news can be categorized as mis-information, dis-information or mal-information.
Mis-information is not known to be false by the distributor, dis-information is false information that the person sharing it knows to be false, and mal-information is false information spread with the intent to harm.
Creators use fake news for content that ranges from satire to full-blown imposter content.
Example of “fake news”
After searching through #elections using TweetDeck, I spotted out many user-generated posts of un-checked content, including the following tweet.
Journalists have adjusted to the influx of fake news on platforms by following a verification process to point out fake news.
Finding the unique identification code
Finding the post’s unique identification code helps to check if the post has appeared on other social networks, as explained by the Knight Center.
On Twitter, the code is a series of numbers following “/status/.” As of now, no other users have shared the post using any different platforms.
Explore the posts metadata
Metadata can include important information like GPS location and the date and time that a photo or video was captured. It also includes details like camera model and shutter speed.
Metadata is useful for journalists when trying to pinpoint the exact location of a photo, as users could give false information about where they are.
In this case, the photo is a screenshot. But using the metadata, I was able to trace the post back to a website. The screenshot shows the graph with unproportional values on each axis, as the site allows users to adjust them. The website shows a graph with different values to represent the data in a more accurate way.
Finding the true source of this photo reveals that the user edited the graph to support their claim, which is misleading.
Find date and time stamps
Date and time stamps only share when content is uploaded, not when the photo or video was originally captured.
So journalists cannot use the stamps as verification for when an event took place. But, they can be used to verify if a user is claiming to be at an event and is actually not in attendance.
For instance, if someone uploads footage and says they are attending a march, but the march has happened weeks ago, journalists will know this is untrue because the stamps on the post would not match up with the date of the march.
For this tweet, the date and time stamps shows that the tweet was in response to another post about Trump’s handling of the economy.
Digital footprints
Exploring a user’s digital footprint helps connect them to specific posts across different platforms.
This user has a Flickr account, which has not been updated. They are not active on any other social media accounts under the same name.
With the user’s digital footprint being so short, and the misleading nature of the post after further investigating, one can determine that it is fake news.
