Fact Checking or Learning to Spot Fake News

Kamenetz, Anya. “Learning To Spot Fake News: Start With A Gut Check.” NPR, NPR, 31 Oct. 2017, www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/10/31/559571970/learning-to-spot-fake-news-start-with-a-gut-check.

Sites For Spotting Lies

Fact-checking sites recommended by the book Web Literacy For Student Fact-Checkers, by Michael Caulfield

Factcheck.org

Washington Post Fact Checker

Snopes

Truth be Told

NPR Fact-Check

Lie Detector (Univision, Spanish language)

Hoax Slayer

FactsCan

El Polígrafo (Mexico, Spanish Language)

Guardian Reality Check

Politifact

Learning To Spot Fake News: Start With A Gut Check

• Author ANYA KAMENETZ
  • Mike Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University in Vancouver.
  • “Mike Caulfield has distilled this approach into what he calls “Four moves and a habit,” in a free online textbook that he has published. It’s aimed at college students, but frankly it’s relevant to everyone.
  • The Four moves are:
  • 1. Check for previous work
  • 2. Go Upstream to the source
  • 3. Read laterally
  • 4. Circle Back
  • 1. 1. Check for previous work: Look around to see whether someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research. [Some places to look: Wikipedia, Snopes, Politifact and NPR’s own Fact Check website.]
       2. Go upstream to the source: Most Web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information. Is it a reputable scientific journal? Is there an original news media account from a well-known outlet? If that is not immediately apparent, then move to step 3.
       3. Read laterally: Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network.
       4. Circle back: If you get lost or hit dead ends or find yourself going down a rabbit hole, back up and start over.
• Lizard Brain – Habit
  • Finally, Caulfield argues in his book that one of the most important weapons of fact-checking comes from inside the reader: “When you feel strong emotion — happiness, anger, pride, vindication — and that emotion pushes you to share a ‘fact’ with others, STOP.”
  • His reasoning: Anything that appeals directly to the “lizard brain” is designed to short-circuit our critical thinking. And these kinds of appeals are very often created by active agents of deception.
  • “We try to convince students to use strong emotions as the mental trigger” for the fact-checking habit, he says.”