In 2020, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar tweeted an image appearing to show former President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani shaking hands. Reporters debunked the photo as an altered fake of a real photo between Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The fake was still shared multiple times. Similarly, the discredited falsehoods in Dinesh D’Souza’s 2022 film “2,000 Mules” are widely shared. It’s not just politics.
Megan Marrell, editorial director of a nonprofit focused on digital literacy, recently noted in the New York Times: “Health misinformation, including about COVID, can still contribute to people not getting vaccinated, and contributes to the spread of real-world disease.”
Twitter just sacked the teams responsible for keeping dangerous or inaccurate material off the platform and stopped enforcing its Covid misinformation policy. With social media, talk radio and TV ubiquitous, electioneering constant and COVID still looming, it’s crucial to know how to spot fake information so that you aren’t manipulated and don’t spread false stories.
Misinformation is the intentional use of false information to affect the participation of voters in elections and to harm a person, group, organization or country. Examples include manipulated audio/visual content and conspiracy theories or rumors. Disinformation is accidental sharing of inaccurate info.
Truth Labs has short videos to inoculate you against misinformation.
Simple steps, suggested by the International Federation of Library Associations, are:
• Consider the source
• Check the author
• Check the date
• Check your biases
• Read beyond outrageous headlines using emotionally charged words to get clicks.
• Supporting sources. Click on the provided links. Do they support the story?
• Is this a joke? If it’s outlandish, maybe it’s satire.
• Ask the experts. Ask a librarian, or consult a fact-checking site such as: PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes, Flack Check and Hoax Slayer.
• You can reverse search an image, using search image with Google Lens.
Don’t be hoodwinked!
Rochelle Kaplan, Cottonwood Heights