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Fake News, Misleading News, Biased News: Home

News (Scroll down for more information about fake news)

Image of flooded Disney world castle is AI-generated. (2024, October 15).  RumorGuard - part of the News Literacy Project.  

News Literacy Project.  Misinformation Dashboard Election 2024.  
"Collecting and cataloguing examples of misinformation reveals valuable insights into the common disinformation tactics and narratives that threaten to influence public opinion about the 2024 election."

Antz, Pieter. (2024, September 4). How to avoid election scams.  MalwarebytesLabs. 

 

Google Search will soon include "about this image."  in search results. (May 10, 2023). This option will tell users when the image and similar images were first indexed by Google. This can help users determine if the image was created by AI.   

Porter, Jon. (2023, October 25). Google Search can now help verify an image's origins.  The Verge.

Also from Google News Initiative:   Reverse image search: Verifying photos: Find photographs and uncover their backstories.

Use the Fake News and AI tab above for more about artificial intelligence and fake news.

 

Wardle, Claire.  (2023, Spring).  Misunderstanding misinformation.  Issues in Science and Technology, 39(3)

LogicCheck: an educational web site that uses the news of the day to illustrate the steps and skills required to become a thoughtful consumer of the news." Jonathan Haber has set up to check "not only facts, but the arguments into which facts fit." 

 MediaWell:  An initiative of the Social Science Research Council "to make academic research on dis- and misinformation available to a wider audience."

Articles about fake news

Aspen Institute (2021, November 15).  Commission on Information Disorder Final Report.. "America is in a crisis of trust and truth. Bad information has become as prevalent, persuasive, and persistent as good information, creating a chain reaction of harm."


Bilton, Ricardo (2017, February 2). Reddit’s /r/worldnews community used a series of nudges to push users to fact-check suspicious news [An approach to checking for fake news: A combination of fact-checking, rating news sources - using algorithms and users. Full report of this study]

Domonoske, C. (2016, November 23). Students have a dismaying inability to tell fake news from real, study finds.  NPR.org    

 

Downes, Stephen. (2016, November 21). Post truth and fake news [Blog post]. [Stephen Downes is an Canadian educator.In 1995 he put out a website on logical fallacies that is archived in various places on the Web.  See http://www.fallacies.ca/  (I hope he is being facetious about taking down satirical sites like The Onion.)  ]

 

​Gershon, L. (2016, November 16).  Ninteenth-century clickbait.  JSTOR Daily.   [Fake and/or misleading information is not necessarily a new phenomenon.]

 

Huguet, Alice, Garrett Baker, Laura S. Hamilton, and John F. Pane, Media Literacy Standards to Counter Truth Decay. RAND Corporation


Journalists Resource Center.  Fake news and the spread of mis-information [Compiled by JRC writer: Denise-Marie Ordway ]

 

Kang, C. (2016, November 22).  Fact Check: This pizzeria is not a child-trafficking site.   New York Times [Comet Ping Pong, Pizzagate]

 

Kaplan, Juliana. (2020, May 17). Inside the surreal Twitter world of Steak-umm, a frozen-meat company that's become an unlikely crusader against coronavirus conspiracies — and a darling of the scientists looking for the cure. Business Insider

 

Maheshwair, S. (2016, November  11).  How fake news goes viral:  A case study.  New York Times.

 

McCoy, T.  (2016, November 20).  For the 'new yellow journalists,' opportunity comes in clicks and bucks. The Washington Post. [“LibertyWritersNews illustrates how websites can use Facebook to tap into a surging ideology, quickly go from nothing to influencing millions of people and make big profits in the process.”]

 

Ohlheiser, A. (2022, August 11).  Google examines how different generations handle misinformation.  MIT Technology Review.  [This article discusses lateral reading to check up on information - and GenZ is better at it than other generations.]

 

Ordway, Denise-MarieRated false: Here’s the most interesting new research on fake news and fact-checking.  January 10, 2020 

 

Paul Hoerner, fake news purveyor who claimed credit for Trump's win, found dead at 38. (2017, September 27).  NPR

 

Sample, Ian. (2020, January 13). What are deepfakes - and how can you spot them?  The Guardian

 

Shane, S. (2017, January 18).  From headline to photograph, a fake news masterpieceNew York Times

 

Spector, Carrie. (2017, October 4).  Stanford scholars observe 'experts' to see how they evaluate the credibility of information online. Stanford. Graduate School of Education.   "The fact checkers read laterally, meaning they would quickly scan a website in question but then open a series of additional browser tabs, seeking context and perspective from other sites."

 

Skwarecki, B. (2017, October 2). How to spot lies on social media after a mass shooting.  Lifehacker. [Written after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, October 1, 2017).

 

Stoddard, J., Tunstall, J., Walker, L., & Wight, E. (2021). Teaching beyond verifying sources and “fake news”: Critical media education to challenge media injustices. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 13(2), 55-70. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2021-13-2-5

 

Szakács, Judit. The business of disinformationEUROZINE.  (April 24, 2020) ["Disinformation is not always ideologically motivated"]

 

Wineburg, S., Breakstone, J., Ziv, N, & Smith, M. (2020, October 21). Educating for misunderstanding: How approaches to teaching digital literacy make students susceptible to scammers, rogues, bad actors, and hate mongers. Working paper A-21322. Stanford History Education Group. 

 

Woolf, C. (2016, November 16). Kids in Macedonia made up and circulated many false news stories in the US election. PRI's The World. [Why did kids in Macedonia make up false news stories?  Money!  Where does the money come from? Ads!]

Other Interesting Articles

 

Fister, B. (2021, February 3).  Lizard people in the library. PIL Provocation Series, No. 1,  Project Information Literacy. 

Google adds "Fact-Check"

April 2017:   Google has added a "fact-check" label to large news stories. See https://blog.google/topics/journalism-news/labeling-fact-check-articles-google-news/

 

Breaking News: From On The Media

"In the immediate aftermath, news outlets will get it wrong."  

"Don't trust anonymous sources."  

"Compare multiple sources."

See Breaking News Consumer's Handbook and the Evaluating Sources tab for more

Let's Make Some Fake News!

Want some tips on creating fake news?  See...

Jacksfilms.  Fake News: Let’s fool the world! (YIAY #314)   YouTube (Comedy) 

Media Literacy

"Media literacy education is not about revealing to students the “true” or “correct” or “hidden” meaning of media messages, nor is it about identifying which media messages are “good” and which ones are “bad.” In media literacy education, media analysis is an exploration of riches, rather than “right” readings."   NAMLE (National Association for Media Literacy):  Letter from the Executive Director