Fake News & Misinformation: How to Spot and Verify

PBS NewsHour Extra. On January 18, 2019 a video sparked outrage online showing a confrontation between Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann and his classmates, and Omaha Nation elder Nathan Phillips on Friday at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

"One can never wear out Walter Lippmann's observation that journalists traffic in stereotypes, not only because they enable "economy of effort." The stereotypes we embrace also assure us of our own status, such that "any disturbance of the stereotypes seems like an attack upon the foundations of the universe....This has been nicely demonstrated in the controversy over the Covington Catholic High School students at the Lincoln Memorial." Source:
Jenkins, Holman W., Jr. "How the News Became Fake." Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition ed., Jan 26 2019, ProQuest. Web.

"Next time there’s a viral story, I’ll wait for more facts to emerge......If the Covington Catholic incident was a test, it’s one I failed—along with most others. Will we learn from it, or will we continue to roam social media, looking for the next outrage fix? Next time a story like this surfaces, I’ll try to sit it out until more facts have emerged. I’ll remind myself that the truth is sometimes unknowable, and I’ll stick to discussing the news with people I know in real life, instead of with strangers whom I’ve never met. I’ll get my news from legitimate journalists instead of from an online mob for whom Saturday-morning indignation is just another form of entertainment." Zimmerman, Julie Irwin. The Atlantic, online, 21 Jan. 2019.

Flanagan, Caitlin. The Atlantic, online, 23 Jan. 2019.

STLCC Campus Life hosted a virtual seminar with the director and producer of the documentary film on Sept. 30, 2020.

Eric Dodson, YouTube. (18:36)
Definition from Oxford Languages: noun: virtue signalling - the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.
"it's noticeable how often virtue signaling consists of saying you hate things"

MakeTechEasier RSS Feed, Andrew Braun, 17 May 2018.

The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Blog

Tips for how, in the wake of a big, tragic story, you can sort good information from bad. Provides a printable .pdf handout. On the Media Blog, New York Public Radio.

Willaim Poundstone, posted Nov 22, 2016 in Psychology Today

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.

Denise-Marie Ordway, Journalist's Resource, January 13, 2020.
A sampling of the research published in 2019 — seven journal articles that examine fake news from multiple angles, including what makes fact-checking most effective and the potential use of crowdsourcing to help detect false content on social media

Chris Meserole, May 9, 2018. Brookings Institution.

"One can never wear out Walter Lippmann's observation that journalists traffic in stereotypes, not only because they enable "economy of effort." The stereotypes we embrace also assure us of our own status, such that "any disturbance of the stereotypes seems like an attack upon the foundations of the universe....This has been nicely demonstrated in the controversy over the Covington Catholic High School students at the Lincoln Memorial. A snippet of video was confidently interpreted as showing an encounter between racist white teenage male students and a dignified Native American Vietnam veteran solemnly banging on his drum in communion with the spirits of his ancestors and in harmony with nature...Unfortunately a great deal of additional video evidence turned out to be available and now the foundations of the media's universe have been shaken." Source:
Jenkins, Holman W., Jr. "How the News Became Fake." Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition ed., Jan 26 2019, ProQuest. Web.

TED Ed Blog: Lessons Worth Sharing

HAPGOOD blog. Mike Caulfield's latest web incarnation. Networked Learning, Open Education, and the Wiki Way.

Science 09 Mar 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6380, pp. 1094-1096.
DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2998

April 27, 2018. NPR, Article and Podcast on All Things Considered

Alan Levinovitz, Slate.com. Instructive Twitter exchange.

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.

The goal of the project is to share "provocative facts about big issues to help Americans debunk myths, hold better conversations, get involved, and make choices as smarter citizens." "Veteran editors" and "professional fact-checkers" screen the information published on the site.

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.

A nonpartisan effort working to address the problem 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.

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).

An essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education, written by Daniel T. Rogers, emeritus professor of history at Princeton University

Authored by leading journalists from the BBC, Storyful, ABC, Digital First Media and other verification experts, the Verification Handbook is a groundbreaking new resource for journalists and aid providers. It provides the tools, techniques and step-by-step guidelines for how to deal with user-generated content (UGC) during emergencies.