Fake News and How to Combat it

"UFO SPOTTED NEAR AREA 51"

The more intriguing it may sound and make us curious wanting to know more about it , the higher are it's odds of being a hoax headline or article.

Due to the emergence of social media platforms and a lot of time spent on the screen most of the people get their news from their feeds. Although it may not be accurate always and a lot of fake news transverses through social media.

Fake news can be of two types - misinformation and disinformation. Although the two are thought to be synonyms but they are not. Misinformation means the story could be outdated or the reported wasn't aware about certain facts. On the contrary disinformation means misleading information was shared on purpose. 

A lie travels 5 times faster than a truth. It is mainly so because it invokes the human emotions or curiosity often with clickbaits or misleading information. Machine learning has polarised people more than ever and the two sides are more prone to disagree than ever before as they only consume feed which aligns with their beliefs and ideas. Just because something aligns with your thoughts does not mean it cannot be fake news.

However we can be responsible and combat fake news by taking few simple steps. 

i) Faked website address: An article may claim to be from a well-known news publication, but is the web address right? Compare the web address to the home page of the actual news organization in question. If there are discrepancies or misspellings in the address, you may have spotted a fake.

ii) The author is anonymous (or extremely well-known): Fraudulent publishers may use a generic author name or omit the byline entirely in order to avoid scrutiny. Alternatively, they may use a very famous person’s name as the byline. The latter warrants investigation. 

iii) The article misrepresents or misquotes its sources: Citing reputable sources is an effective way of making your argument seem more credible. However, if the article doesn’t accurately reflect the sources it uses, it should be treated with suspicion.

iv) The article contains spelling and grammatical errors: Real news sources employ editors to provide high-quality content. Purveyors of fake news often don’t. As a result, fake news articles may contain excessive writing errors.

"You are responsible for your own actions." In the world of social media it is truer than ever.