Skip to Main Content

Fake News! Is this Real?

Social Media & Fake News

 

More people than ever are receiving large quantities of their news from social media. Most social media posts are created to elicit a high emotional impact. It's important to be active in your evaluation of your social media feeds! Check sources before you absently "like", "share", and/or "re-tweet" that post!

Image: eTrends

How to spot a fake Twitter Post

image showing twitter logo

Check the account history of the source. Two red flags are:

  • the number of posts 
  • how long the account has been active.

If it claims to be a well-known source(like CNN or CBS) and only has a few posts in its history that is a clue. If it's a well-known source and the account has only been active a short time that is another red flag.

Images of an event are often reused to deceive people. You can check if an image has been used before on a reverse image search service like TinEye.

Elli Pariser: Beware of Online Filter Bubbles

Understand the filter bubble effect on your feeds. The following TED talk is great at explaining Why you see What you see!

As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy