Fact v Fiction
How to Deal with Fake News in an Online World.
We first started hearing about the dangers of ‘fake news’ in 2016. However, misleading and inaccurate news has been around for far longer than that, along with its effects. Sometimes fake news is kind of funny and absurd, but other times it convinces people that climate change isn’t real or leads them to vote for a politician they don’t actually agree with.
Usually, when we’re talking about fake news we’re actually talking about two separate things: misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is the unintentional spread of false information, and when spotted it can be fixed. Disinformation, on the other hand, is deliberately spreading lies and ‘fake news’. There have been increasing numbers of coordinated disinformation campaigns. In 2017 the UK Parliament made an inquiry into how much fake news had affected the Brexit referendum, finding that democracy in the UK is “clearly vulnerable to covert digital influence campaigns'' from other countries. This is scary stuff and it affects everyone.
Disinformation, in particular, is really good at creating so much noise and confusion through an array of differing information. When it spreads rapidly through social media, it causes people to end up not believing anyone for fear that they’re lying- or sticking with what scared them the most. We’re seeing serious consequences of this right now; look at the people refusing to wear masks because of dodgy health claims that, amongst all the noise on social media, look the exact same as actual medical advice.
Despite all the confusion that both misinformation and disinformation can cause there are some things that you can be aware of that can limit its effect.
1. Look past sensationalist headlines
Sometimes news really is that shocking, but often the real story is far more complex and the only reason the dramatic headline was used is to get you to click on it so the website gets the ad revenue. And don’t share articles you haven’t actually read! In the case of most online news sites, the person who wrote the article didn’t get to decide on the headline, and the headline is definitely not the whole story.
2. Be wary of breaking news
This is often where misinformation can unintentionally sneak in to even reputable sources while journalists are rushing to get the story out first.
If what’s being reported is still ongoing check back later to get a better picture of what happened, you’ll be saving yourself time in the long run. More reputable sources will publish corrections and edits to breaking news stories and will let you know that there's more to be updated on. If a website is missing this, that’s usually a red flag.
3. Remember that true neutrality is impossible
All media will always have some sort of bias one way or the other; even this article is a bit biased (notice the PragerU bashing earlier?). There’s always going to be another way to frame and tell the same story. If it's a topic you don’t know a lot about, try to read as broadly as possible and get a range of perspectives and understand the facts that all of them agree on, that stuff is almost always true.
Make a quick search to find out who published the story and importantly who chose to publish and fund it, that way you can take their biases into account when reading- or ignore it altogether.
4. Just like journalists, data and statistics aren’t neutral either
Reputable sources will link the sources that they’ve used, if a statistic looks too convenient for the author’s bias, check where it came from and in what context it was produced. It might turn out that the sample size was far too small to be representative, or that other data would suggest differently than the author’s argument.
5. If in doubt, stick to the experts
That means things that have been written by people with lived experience of what they’re talking about, or actual degrees on the subject. There are lots of journalists out there that have years of experience covering a specific topic, who’s writing you can generally trust to get a good idea of what’s going on.
It can seem daunting at first, but with practice you’ll get a lot quicker at figuring out if something you’re being shown online is fact or fiction. There are also now dedicated organisations and websites combating fake news such as factcheck.org and snopes.com. Remember to look out for those around you that might be susceptible to misleading news too. Your gran probably isn’t as used to navigating social media as you are, and these are the people that can often be hurt by it the most.
