Two years ago, the American Dialect Society’s (ADS) word of the year was “fake news”, defined as both “‘disinformation or falsehoods represented as real news’” and “‘actual news that is claimed to be untrue’”. Fast forward to now, and fake news is still a problem, despite the efforts like Google’s Be Internet Awesome program teaching children about media literacy, or Finland’s critical thinking curriculum that teaches students ways to spot fake news.

A recent example flooding Instagram was the mass of users claiming to be helping the Sudan political crisis. The largest account, @SudanMealProject (which has since been removed by Instagram for violating their policies), gained up to 400,000 followers and received over 1 million likes on a post promising that for every follow and story repost, they would provide a meal to starving children in Sudan. To make matters worse, the account had also been spreading false information, posting statistics like “more than six million need urgent food assistance” – which are actually statistics about South Sudan, an entirely different country.

Images source: Lorenz, T. (2019). Sudan and the Instagram Tragedy Hustle. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/instagrammers-are-exploiting-sudan-crisis/591808/.

Once news began to surface that the accounts were fake and unable to provide proof they were in collaboration with aid agencies, yet again it reminds us of the importance of checking our sources and being able to identify fake news – even when it’s something not on a news site, but sitting in our social media platforms.

Hence, below are some questions to ask and tips to keep in mind when reading about a topic to make sure you can spot what is trustworthy and what is not. These are adapted from Harvard Summer School’s and University of Toronto Libraries’ tips.

WHO IS BEHIND THE SOURCE?

1. Check the publisher of the source to see the leadership figures and mission purpose behind it. This information can usually be found on the “About Us” page on a website or the “bio” of a social media account. This can help in pinpointing any possible biases in the information, and you can find out about the perspective that the source holds about some topics.
2. Check the author of the source and examine whether they have expertise in the topic that you’re reading about. It’s also a good sign if they give some contact information, as that means they’re open to being asked about or reconfirming the source’s content.
3. Check the date that the source was posted to know the context of the topic. Make sure they’re not talking about an event from the past and placing it in a new context. Also, more recent releases will likely include the newest updates or discoveries of a topic, so it might provide new insight.

HOW DOES THE SOURCE LOOK AND SOUND?

1. Check the domain of the source, and be wary of unusual names, especially those ending in things like .com.co, .infonet, or .offer. Sources ending in .org, .gov, .edu, or at least .com would likely be more credible sources, though do keep in mind that they may have a bias in presenting information that will help their purpose (for example, to encourage sales of their product).
2. Read through the article and pay attention to the writing style (punctuation, grammar, spelling errors). Reliable sources usually have articles/posts proofread and checked before publishing, with high standards regarding the grammar and information quality. Does it sound as if it has gone through some quality control?
3. Check the citations and research that went into the article, where you can see where the author collected the information from. If the information comes from other reliable sources, then it will be more trustworthy (though perhaps biased). If it seems the author did not conduct any research, the source could be questionable unless the author has a lot of personal expertise in the field.

WHAT DO OTHERS SAY ABOUT THE SOURCE AND THE TOPIC?

1. Check sources talking about the same topic to check whether other sources’ information align with and support the information in the source. This also helps you to build a broader understanding of the topic as you read about it from a variety of perspectives. You can check with trusted fact-checking websites like com, Factcheck.org, International Fact-Checking Network, or Politifact.com.