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Article of the Week #2
The Best Tips for Spotting Fake News in the Age of Trump
by William Colglazier, January 17, 2017
Wait, what?! Did you hear? The days of saying the Pledge of Allegiance are gone! Check it out…
Now the question is, would you click Post to Facebook? What about share or retweet it? I guess it depends — but not on what you might initially think. It shouldn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with the Pledge, consider yourself a religious person or an atheist, whether you are a Democrat or Republican, mourner of Hillary’s failed presidential bid or celebrant of Trump’s impending inauguration. What takes precedence, what is paramount, is whether this story is true.
To be clear, the story is fake, but that didn’t stop over two million people from sharing, commenting, liking, or reacting with an emoji on Facebook in the last month.
Now, maybe a fake news story about politics doesn’t wow you. But a rumor (i.e. fake news story) about your best friend would. As it seeps into the school hallways and your classmates’ digital devices, what would you do to protect her? Mindlessly repeat it? No! Your logical first step would be to find the source of the rumor and ask, who is he? Is he essentially a reliable person or a frenemy seeking high school drama?
A recent Stanford University study found that over 80% of middle-schoolers couldn’t determine the difference between an article and an advertisement online, according to NPR. Not knowing the agenda of the gossiper is a sure way to swallow a lie.
When high school students were asked whether “sponsored content” from a Bank of America financial advisor was a reliable source to determine the saving habits of millennials, most said it was, neglecting the incentive for a bank to encourage people to pay a bank for financial advice. By asking essential questions of sources of information — like who wrote it and why is he writing it — would save you from this trap and begin setting the record straight for your rumor affected friend (it might even save you some money later in life, apparently).
The next step to saving your friend’s reputation would be to inquire about the rumor monger’s reputation. Who do they hang out with? What do other people say about them? Are other people, people that you trust, saying the same rumor about your friend? This skill of cross-checking the source’s character and information with other sources provides verification. This type of inquiry can easily be done via text message between classes or, crazy thought here, face to face at lunch time.
Transferring this analogy to the online world where fake news infected the latest presidential election, a good first action is to Google the name of the author or organization behind the “news” and see if any red flags surface. In interviews with experienced fact-checkers at prestigious news organizations, Stanford Ph.D. student Sarah McGrew and professor Sam Wineburg observed that the tactic fact checkers employed first was to move off the original post and onto another to learn more about the author and organization to help with determining accuracy. Cross-checking can apparently be a status saver for both teenagers and presidential contenders.
So if we use that same rumor-killing process with the post about Obama banning the Pledge of Allegiance, we would find out some interesting facts. ABCNews.com.co isn’t actually the ABC News you were thinking of (that’s abcnews.go.com). What a difference two letters make! Immediately, you would find that out after comparing the look of the two sites as the fake ABC News site has continuous advertisements asking you to download the latest Plug-in for Flash Player to play some medieval knight fighting app game. The “news” organization reportedly earns $10,000 a month from advertisements due to web traffic to the site. Googling the author, Jimmy Rustling, would, -- surprise surprise -- tell you he’s not a reputable journalist when his bio achievements or his ‘Russian mail order bride” and for his daily work he “spends 12-15 hours each day teaching [his] adopted 8-year-old Syrian refugee daughter how to read and write.”
When over 170 high schoolers were given the task below about whether the picture provides strong evidence about the conditions near the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, nearly 40% claimed it did without any worry about the origin of the picture. Who is pleasegoogleShakerAamerpleasegoogleDavidKelly? I’d like to know that before being baited into forwarding this photo and claim to my friends.
Asking simple and logical questions can destroy a lunch-time rumor, and it’s exactly what needs to be done when engaging with updates to your newsfeed on Facebook and Twitter. Rumors and lies are not a 21st century invention, and neither is fake news. No, a man did not die in a meth-lab explosion after lighting his farts on fire. And sorry, a woman did not murder her college roommate for sending out too many Candy Crush requests. (Both of these fake news stories went viral in 2016).
But if Facebook is the preferred location to obtain news for almost nine out of 10 young adults, according to a 2015 Media Insight Project study, then you must arm yourself with 21st century armor to guard against fake news.
Maybe public schools should adopt a new Pledge of Allegiance, one for this exciting but ominous 21st century. Repeat after me, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of Truth and Accuracy, and to the Republic of cross-checking for which is stands, one humanity, sans mindless retweets and shares, with liberty and justice for all.”
Respond to the following prompt using the CER format. Evidence must be a direct quote from the article, cited correctly. Also, use at least three prefix/root/suffixes from Semester 1 (and highlight them).
Compare and contrast the message/delivery in this article to “The Danger of a Single Story”