Research Help Guide: Social Media

In his recent article, A.J. Willingham gives the top ten ways to determine if the news story is fake.

1. Does the story come from a strange URL?
2. Does the headline match the information in the article
3. Is it a recent story, or an old one that has been re-purposed?
4. Are the supporting videos or photos verifiable?
5. Does the article cite primary sources?
6. Does the story feature quotes, and are they traceable?
7. Is it the only outlet reporting the story?
8. Is your own bias getting in the way?
9. Has it been debunked by a reputable fact-checking organization?
10. Is the host on a list of unreliable news websites?

Check the account history of the source. Two red flags are: the number of posts and how long the account has been active. If it claims to be a well know source(like CNN or CBS) and only has a few posts in its history that is a clue. If it's a well know source and the account has only been active a short time that is another red flag.

Images of an event are often reused to deceive people. You can check if an image has been used before on a reverse image search service like TinEye.

The Twitter website offers a lot of information about verifying Twitter accounts. Check out the page here. The first rule on this page is

can your online resources for easy-to-spot red flags. Watch out for:

• A specific point of view is pushed
• Lots of advertising
• Non-professional looking websites (poor design, misspellings)
• Lack of citations or links to verifiable information
• Merchandise or payment requests
• No author/sponsoring organization is listed, either on the main page or in an 'About Us' section

Centre for International Governace Innovation. (2019 November 4). How to Stop Fake News on Social Media. [Video File] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VycpUTeYto