Fake News, Mis- & Disinformation

From Cornell University's excellent guide on the subject:

Fake news is not news you disagree with.

"Fake news" is "fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent. Fake-news outlets, in turn, lack the news media's editorial norms and processes for ensuring the accuracy and credibility of information. Fake news overlaps with other information disorders, such as misinformation (false or misleading information) and disinformation (false information that is purposely spread to deceive people)." [David M. J. Lazer, et al., "The Science of Fake News," Science 09 Mar 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6380, pp. 1094-1096.].

By now you've probably heard these terms a lot, maybe along with "truthiness," or "post-truth." They all have slightly different meanings, but they point to the same trend: information becoming much more difficult to trust.

Being able to use the internet critically is key to recognizing these misleading trends.

There are a lot of tools for building this skill out there, but an excellent 10-part series on Youtube that we recommend is called Crash Course: Navigating Digital Information (you might even find it entertaining). 

This is the intro video. You can watch the full series here. The Crash Course on Media Literacy is also great!

The thing is, quality of information lies on a spectrum. It's not a duality: good information and bad information. It is our job to evaluate the information we receive, find out where it falls on that spectrum, and decide how to use it going forward. But as a species, we are not very good at judging the quality of information on the internet. In fact, we've always been bad at it. In 2002, a study with over 2000 participants reported that a website's design was the most frequently mentioned factor in judging a website's credibility.... adults and young people alike still typically evaluate information based on factors unrelated to its content: how it looks, whether they've used it before, or who referred them to it.

- John Green