![]() One way to root them out is to drop a suspicious handle into the search engine. Real sender or bot? Twitter bots are the truth-killers of the Twitterverse. If the deleted tweet isn't there, either, it probably never existed in the first place. Go to Politiwoops, a website from ProPublica that lists all deleted tweets from sitting political officials and candidates. But there's a way to check if that is true too. Sometimes fake stories will explain the missing tweet by alleging that the politician deleted it after public outcry. Again, if the tweet sounds too crazy to be true, it's worth a look at the politician's or celebrity's verified Twitter feed to see if the statement is really there. A fake news account will probably have a recent date, in response to some news item.įake news sites will also doctor a supposed screenshot of a Twitter post from a politician and report the Photoshopped statement as news. Also, check when the account was created. If it's really from a celebrity or public figure, there should be a blue verified icon next to the person's name. ![]() Is the Twitter handle real or fake? Spoof accounts are a big problem. If it's old, you'll see links going back for years, many of them from equally fake news stories. If it's truly fresh, you will only see a few links published in the past few hours. To check the history of an online image in Google Chrome, just right-click on the image and select "Search Google for image." The results will show you everywhere else that the photo or image has been published. If it has, you can be pretty sure it's not from whatever it's claiming to be." "The first thing to check is if that photo has been around for three or four years. "The story will say, 'Look, this is the photo of the terrorist!' or 'This is happening right now in Paris,'" says Mantzarlis. In the wake of a real terrorist attack or natural disaster, Mantzarlis says that fake news sites will try to cash in on a heightened emotional moment by fooling readers with powerful, but unrelated pictures. What about the photo? A reverse image search is another easy way to quickly check the veracity of a new story, especially for breaking news. Even though is down now, you can see that the web address is owned by a guy named Paul Horner in Phoenix (who feels bad, incidentally, about his possible role in influencing the election). Who owns the URL? If you have doubts, you can quickly check who owns it through a WHOIS search. The site published widely-shared stories about how the Amish would vote in droves for Trump and an atheist mayor who fired a firefighter for praying. One good example is, a news parody site that masqueraded as the real ABC News during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Who's behind the abbreviated link? Sometimes, those links shortened on Twitter with "bit.ly" or "tinyurl" are designed to hide a phony URL. Because very often it doesn't."īefore you share that link across your social network, Mantzarlis has some other suggestions and tools for separating real news from fake." "It starts with actually opening the link and seeing whether the body of the text actually supports the headline. "None of this is rocket science," Mantzarlis says. While he says that fact-checking is indeed everyone's job - media outlets, social media networks, teachers, readers - it doesn't have to be a drag. The fact that you've made it all the way to this paragraph means that you're not afraid to "go deep." So how can you be sure that what you're reading on the internet is true or not?Īlexios Mantzarlis leads the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. (Betcha didn't know that Abraham Lincoln and Dwight D. The very top result (at least at time of publication) is a link to a 2008 blog post claiming that Barack Obama was in fact the nation's seventh black president. Type "first African-American president of the United States" into Google and see what comes up. And they should go deeper, because the fake news phenomena isn't fake at all, and it isn't confined to fringe websites and your uncle's Facebook.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |