Did you know that the editor of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, was just arrested for sex trafficking children in Los Angeles this past week? Neither did anyone else because it was a clickbait article on Facebook.
Fake news has been around as long as politics has, but clickbait (links with sensationalized headlines or images) has been recently appearing alongside other content on the internet, blurring the boundary between fact and opinion. Real news contains facts from sources that can be verified. Fake news is not based on facts but is often created to intensify negative or positive emotions and usually has a specific bias for or against a person or an issue. This can affect the people’s views on major events, such as the recent Presidential election. For example, ‘The Denver Guardian’ wrote an article reporting that the FBI Agent who supposedly leaked Hillary Clinton’s private emails was found dead in a suspected murder-suicide. The website owner was later tracked down and questioned by other journalists and admitted to them that the story was untrue.
Many of the organizations who write fake news stories will use big corporation names, such as ABC news, or official-sounding newspaper names like, ‘The Denver Guardian’ to fool you, but Abc.com.co is not the official ABC News website and The Denver Guardian’s web address was not connected to any news organization and it is no longer up and running,
Even though fake news is a major problem today there are ways to tell if what you are reading is real or not. One of those ways is to be more suspicious of those articles that you find on social media pages. Use the tips below to be a more informed citizen.
Learn To Spot The Difference
Fake news articles are just like rumors, they need little information for people to believe and they spread like wildfire.
It’s difficult to spot fake news articles but here are five common ways to spot fake news:
Who wrote it? Fake news authors will often use an alias. You’ll be able detect a fake news author by clicking on their bio. If they only have an email or wrote very little about themselves then they are most likely a fake news author.
Is there more on it? Whatever article you’re reading always look for other articles on it. If the information you’re reading on has no other articles or the same information on it then it is most likely fake.
Check the URLs. Most fake news websites will often look real and sound real but there is one key factor that the creators can’t hide: the URL. Most fake news websites will have a URL that ends in .com.co. An example of one is abc.com.co.
Check the quotes. Most stories will have some kind of quote from someone related to the story. Fake news article don’t always have quotes and if they do it’s either not helpful to the article or doesn’t give the reasons why the person they are quoting is helpful to the article.
How does it make you feel? Fake news articles often try to make you feel strong emotions. While reading an article, if you begin to feel incredibly angry you need to take a step back and breathe. Once you have go back to it and start looking for clue to tell you if it is a real news article or a fake one.
Keep these skills with you everywhere you go and you’ll always be able to spot fake news!
Written by:
Jessica Nanni
Kate Colflesh
Nick Pierron
Edited by:
Louis Mazza
Sources:
The Palette 