The proliferation of fake news across the internet, especially on Facebook, has become one of the major talking points in the wake of the shocking result of the 2016 US presidential election (with some arguing fake news helped elect President Donald Trump). Regardless, it seems to be getting harder and harder to discern the difference between trustworthy journalism and fake content created for the sake of a click—but it’s not at all impossible.
Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication & media at Merrimack College, started a list of websites known to have published articles with false information as a way to help her students learn about journalism and media literacy. Thanks to the magic of Google Documents, it's now accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Read the entire public document here (via Gennady Kolker).
The growing guide is meant to be an educational tool for combating fake news. The list includes nearly 150 websites Zimdars and her students have called out for the potential for spreading misinformation, including those masquerading as real media outlets (such as MSNBC.com.co and abcnews.com.co), those that are complete satire (The Onion, ClickHole) and those with a baiting or heavily biased tone (Upworthy, Crooks and Liars, InfoWars).
Bad web design, headlines that incite an emotional reaction, ALL CAPS ANYTHING, and community-section bloggers posting under the banner of news outlets are a few tells for fake news.
Zimdars writes that her antidote for fake news is to read or listen to a variety of sources and be widely informed, naming The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal as some of her go-to, trustworthy news outlets. But even these sometime “rely on particular media frames to report stories and select stories based on different notions of newsworthiness.” All media should be consumed with a critical eye — and when fake news is capable of shaping so much, it’s never been a more important lesson.
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from This List of Fake News Websites Proliferating on Facebook Is Staggering
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