How to avoid fake news
- Chelsea Harper
- Jun 21, 2024
- 1 min read
Sam Wineberg is a professor at Stanford University who is trying to help create a roadmap for schools that could teach students how to separate real and “fake news.” During his trials he had historians and fact checkers read multiple stories some real and some fake and had them sort out what was what. The fact checkers did better than the historians. Some of the reasons why were that the fact checkers, when facing news they thought might be misinformation, would take the time to research about the source they were getting their news from. A lot of people try and decide if a news site “looks professional” by seeing if there are any ads, product placement, or resources listed but none of those things matter. Trolls have become really good at making a website look real so one of the best things people can do is leave the site and double check the name of the organization. Another big thing that helped fact checkers was what Wineberg called “ exercising click restaint” ( Stienmetz, 2018). Most people will click on the first news story that Google generates thinking that top stories are more reliable. However, the algorithm places stories that match the most key words in our search and dont have anything to do with reliability. This is one way bots and people can keep fake news stories relevant by entering key words that they think will get their stories to the top of search engines.
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