LibGuides: Fake News & Misinformation: How to Spot It and Verify: Articles, Projects, Studies, & Reports

Articles and Blog Posts

5 Useful Tools to Help You Spot Fake News
MakeTechEasier RSS Feed, Andrew Braun, 17 May 2018.
How misinformation spreads on social media—And what to do about it
Chris Meserole, May 9, 2018. Brookings Institution.
Wikipedia Founder Says Internet Users Are Adrift In The 'Fake News' Era
April 27, 2018. NPR, Article and Podcast on All Things Considered
Alternative Facts and Fake News – Verifiability in the Information Society
The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Blog
A Brief History of Fake News How spoofers and trollers learned to monetize gullibility
By Willaim Poundstone, posted Nov 22, 2016 in Psychology Today
A Brief History of How Fake News Spreads So Easily on Facebook
By I. Oh and K. Vongkiatkajorn, posted Nov. 22, 2016 in Mother Jones. Presents a timeline of the key moments leading to the spreading of fake news on Facebook.
Facebook, Google and others join The Trust Project, an effort to increase transparency around online news
Fake or real? How to self-check the news and get the facts
MPRNews, Dec 5, 2016
How to tell fake news from real news
TED Ed Blog: Lessons Worth Sharing
How “News Literacy” Gets the Web Wrong, Mike Caulfied
HAPGOOD blog. Mike Caulfield's latest web incarnation. Networked Learning, Open Education, and the Wiki Way.
The Science of Fake News
Science 09 Mar 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6380, pp. 1094-1096.
DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2998
William Shatner’s Tweets Are a Classic Case of Misinformation
By Alan Levinovitz, Slate.com

Projects, Studies, and Reports

While much has been written about fake news, scholars have published a limited amount of peer-reviewed research on the topic. Journalist's Resource has compiled studies that examine fake news and the spread of misinformation more broadly to help journalists better understand the problem and its impacts.

Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Reasoning, Nov. 2016
It’s not always easy to tell fake news from real news. A recent Stanford University study concluded that many middle school, high school and college students cannot distinguish the two from one another. In a series of 56 exercises, the study’s lead researchers concluded that information literacy needs to be added to classroom curricula at all levels of education. Students were unable to tell the difference between ads and real news articles, nor were they always able to detect bias.
Fake news and the spread of misinformation, a list of peer-reviewed studies
From Journalist’s Resource, a project of the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center and the Carnegie-Knight Initiative; an open-access site that curates scholarly studies and reports.
The Trust Project
A nonpartisan effort called The Trust Project is working to address this situation by helping online users distinguish between reliable journalism and promotional content or misinformation. The Trust Project has released eight Trust Indicators created by leaders from over 75 news organizations that will offer additional transparency about an organization’s ethics and practices.

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The Trust Project itself was started by journalist Sally Lehrman of Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and is funded by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s Philanthropic Fund, Google, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, and the Markkula Foundation.

"A Discipline-Based Approach to Information Literacy."
This article, which proposes a discipline-based approach to teaching information literacy, argues that the responsibility for teaching information literacy should be shared throughout an academic institution, rather than limited to the library. An outline of the complementary responsibilities of librarians and classroom faculty in teaching information literacy is presented.

Commentary

The Post-Truth Issue
Commentary articles published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"Post-truth—adjective; relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."(Oxford Dictionary).
When Truth Becomes a Commodity
An essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education, written by Daniel T. Rogers, emeritus professor of history at Princeton University

Find Reliable News Sources: Use Databases, STLCC Libraries

Access World News
Articles from local, regional, and national U.S. newspapers.

Five full text databases are included. NewsBank Academic Library Collection provides contemporary articles from national and international newspapers, wire services and magazines from 1986 forward. Newsbank Retrospective covers 1970-1991 and focuses on contemporary American History. MOREnet offered Full-Text Newspapers includes local, regional and national newspapers in one searchable database. The Kansas City Star covers 1991-Current and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch covers 1988-Current.

HTML Guide
System Requirements
Faculty: Use this URL within Blackboard: http://ezproxy.stlcc.edu/login?auth=ezpr0xy&url=http://infoweb.newsbank.com
Ethnic Newswatch
Ethnic, minority and native press, Spanish and English interfaces.

Ethnic NewsWatch is an interdisciplinary and comprehensive full-text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press, presented in numerous languages. The entire database is searchable in both English and other languages. Articles can be translated within the database itself.

Proquest LibGuide
Faculty: Use this URL within Blackboard: http://ezproxy.stlcc.edu/login?auth=ezpr0xy&url=https://search.proquest.com/ethnicnewswatch?accountid=14081
Nexis Uni
More than 15,000 news, business and legal sources.

NexisUni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches, and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents. Full text of the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is included.

Help page
System Requirements
Faculty: Use this URL within Blackboard: http://ezproxy.stlcc.edu/login?auth=ezpr0xy&url=http://www.nexisuni.com
NewsBank America's News Magazines
A small collection of popular magazine titles including US national magazines such as Time, U.S. News and World Report, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek.

A small collection of popular magazine titles including US national magazines such as Time, U.S. News and World Report, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek. Business content includes Fortune and Money. Entertainment and lifestyle titles include Real Simple, People, Parenting, In Style and more. Content for children includes Time for Kids, Teen People, and Sports Illustrated for Kids. America’s News Magazine collection includes 23 current magazine titles and five archived titles.

HTML Guide
System Requirements
Faculty: Use this URL within Blackboard: http://ezproxy.stlcc.edu/login?auth=ezpr0xy&url=http://infoweb.newsbank.com/?db=AMNP

View a list of all Databases, STLCC Libraries