Identifying fake news
The world is full of fakers who have always deceived innocent people with emotional pinches.
We now have arrived in an era mired with vicious acts of deception. Yes, we all know that fake news and information are now the in-thing. Despite knowing this fact, we often believe those fake info and are tempted to share those with our dear ones.
When I was a child in the early 1970s, we received printed leaflets that exploited people’s religious emotions. The flyers would cite a verse from the scriptures and order the audience to print several such copies and distribute them among the people around us. They added that if we did so, something extraordinary (God’s blessing) would happen to us, but a terrible misfortune (God’s wrath) would befall us if we did not do so.
After all these years, when I look back, I see nothing has changed as far as deception is concerned. We now have a more robust tool to fool people – the great invention of social media that perpetuates similar funny and criminal acts, deceiving the innocent audience.
Fake news spreads six times faster on social media than facts. If we want to be aware of fake news, we must be sure about the source. Fake news does not contain citations and references. So, we must be careful about sharing such kinds of info or post or status.
When we see something going viral, we should wait till the real media picks it up.
It is also important to understand our own biases. What makes us tempted to get excited about a particular news story and share it? Once we know our own biases, we can recognize fake news stories which are also mind-bogglingly biased. And if we notice a news story is biased, we may think of alerting the author to the factual truth.
Whether the news we are reading is fake or not, several key signs will help us spot fake news. We may check whether the report contains links that trace the source of information. Fake news articles also often have information irrelevant to the topic of the article. They also tend to appeal to our emotions. So let us be wary of anything that seems out of place.
Yes, the best way to avoid being cheated by fake news is to be wary of its sources. For example, some sites publish stories with images taken from other websites or have been photoshopped. We can quickly identify fake news stories by checking the image source. Google Reverse Image Search is a good tool. We can find the correct URL by right-clicking on the image and selecting ‘Google search. Websites displaying striking images are often fake news.
The author of a fake news story usually does not interview anyone and instead cites a reliable source as the source of their story. We can also identify fake news by the time stamp, date stamp, and similar articles published by other news organizations.
Another way to identify fake news is by looking for native advertisements. They look like additional stories but are actually advertisements for sponsors. Readers often mistake these ads for real news, which may contradict its intended message.
In addition, sensational headlines are designed to grab attention, often containing all-caps and overly-bold language. If we notice a story straying from the headline, it is most likely fake news.
