I started building towards a bit of a quest lately. I am intrigued by the proliferation of false news–stories designed to mislead and titillate, mostly to encourage the reader to behave or think in a certain way but also for ‘clickbait’ purposes. I decided that I would start mapping out a list of sites that were ‘bad actors’ and use that list as the basis for a future student project with the goal of deepening the list. What followed were a lot of clicks to bad sites. In retrospect I should’ve done all this in Chrome’s Incognito mode, because it would have lessened the impact on my web travel profile.
There are a few basic truths about fake news. If the news comes in list form and reminds you that #7 is shocking! then it is fake. If you click and are redirected to a page where a bunch of salacious headlines are the main situation, fake. If the words ‘weird’ and ‘trick’ appear in any sentence, fake. Overexposure of breasts? probably fake news. Probably. If the article cites wikipedia it ought to be considered suspect. If the article is in proximity to one in which a notable celebrity who you know to be alive is being eulogized, you might be dealing with fake news.
That is all rookie level stuff. I’m looking to dig deeper…