Fake News Examples for Students and How to Find the Facts

9 min read
Fake News Examples for Students and How to Find the Facts

The world has become closer due to the internet. It allows people from all across the globe to share news and information. It has also increased the productivity of people from around the world. This has also allowed news of natural disasters or crises to be heard from millions of miles away and allow help to them, which is simply astonishing.

However, there is always a negative side to everything. No matter how much we emphasize the greatness that news has accomplished with the technology revolution, we see it everywhere from newspapers, Television, Social Media, and many others.

Manipulation of news is mainly easy, and people use the platform to spread fake news, which can have a drastic impact on people’s lives.

Thus, it is one of the most intrusive aspects of news nowadays; therefore, today, we will talk about what fake news is and what impacts it poses on the lives of people not only from a specific part but across the globe.

What is Fake News?

The issue of spreading misinformation and fake news is a major problem worldwide. Even students are being targeted with the problem. As per a study conducted by Stanford University, only a quarter of high school students could distinguish a real news story from several fake ones. They also failed to identify fake photographs, as well as doctored videos.

Students should be cautious while looking at all news that is spread globally. They must understand the article’s context and identify who wrote it. Moreover, they should check recent events to see if anything has changed since the article was published.

Secondly, they should also verify the authenticity of the news by finding out the source’s reliability. Is the site in the good books of the journalism industry? Are there any authentic sources, or does the article have a satirical tone?

So you must check these before actually believing any word of the news shared.

It is highly important to evaluate the article’s structure. Check for any misleading or instigator words or anything that hints towards propaganda.

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Fake News Examples

Eight graders of New York City School are given real-world examples such as onion articles or John Oliver songs. A task to identify what they see is news, opinion, entertainment, propaganda, or something else?

Students need to be more proficient in verifying and identifying informational sources. Now people are just bombarded with so much high-quality-looking content. It can be tailor-made just for you, and it is hard to wade through it all.

If it says the op-ed, you know this is someone’s opinion. It isn’t very objective. Not always, though, and that’s when it gets tricky this is. Identifying fake news is taught in sixty different countries as a part of the curriculum.

This is because now the adults realize that their kids are finding difficulty differentiating between the real and fake news shared on social media. Therefore, they should be taught this separately as a part of their academics.

Where Do Children Get Their News from?

There are a lot of sources from which the new generation can get their information. Social media platforms are on the top, as it is the easiest way for children to get information.

However, as we have discussed, they are not authentic sources as anyone can publish their news on the network, which can get million o views and share. To name a few, we have listed the top three sources from where children get their news from:

  • YouTube
  • CNN + Fox
  • The New York Times

What Are Some Authentic News Sources?

  • NEWS 12 (Local News)
  • ABC NEWS
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Top 5 Fake News Examples

  • Man pretended to be deaf and dumb for sixty-two years to avoid listening to his wife, often ending with the wife filing for divorce.
  • Women give birth to 17 identical babies in a single pregnancy.
  • The news showed an X-ray of a cockroach that said that it lived inside the chest of a form Zimbabwe; it turns out the actual x-ray is cockroach free.
  • The government will ban alcohol sales in India in 2019.
  • The world would run out of chocolates in the next forty years.

How to Detect Fake News?

This article guide will help you detect the fake news that is being shared on social media now and then. Here are the top ways to identify fake news.

Look for Shady URLs

If the URL ends with ‘.lo’ or ‘.com.co’, there are slim chances of them being legitimate news sites.

Examine the Layout

Thoroughly examine the website for incorrect spelling or grammar, invalid dates, language that doesn’t seem news-like, or inappropriate and sensational images.

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Do Your Research

The next thing you can do is research the article source, writer, and any sponsors or supporters of the news site.

Corroborate the News

Check whether the same news item is published on other credible new sites or not.

Search for Images Included in the News

If you find that a certain picture is used in various news pieces, these are grounds for suspicion. You have to become a digital detective. You need first to identify the source of information. Propaganda and conspiracy theorists tend to generate a URL that looks just like that of a reliable news site.

Ultimately, you can find out whether a news site is authentic by reading other news pieces on it, rather than reading just the one.

If you find the headings very lousy and funny, then that’s an alarming signal for you because it’s short-circuiting your thinking capacity. For further investigation, you need to scroll down and see the article’s author.

This is an important tip in helping you figure out the authenticity of a particular piece of information.

One way rumor spreads is that many people keep repeating the same information, but nobody has verified it. So, journalists depend on high-quality sources, so experts, how did you come across this information and know that this information is true.

So verification is another important part that one should always consider.

Apart from the content, it is very vital to see whether the images inserted in the article are accurate or not? Someone takes that photo years ago, maybe three years or even five years, and claims this is happening in the current era.

This can be identified by using a reverse image search on google. It can tell you where that image has appeared before and who has shared it previously. So you can easily know that is the image shared original or fake.

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The Impact of Fake News

It’s the rapid and pervasive spread of fake news online. The largest-ever study into the phenomenon examined more than a hundred and twenty-six thousand news-related claims on Twitter, and it found some very shocking results.

Fake news is just as likely to spread as far and as fast by less active users, have fewer followers, and follow fewer people. Mostly new information spreads faster to get shared. Also, fake news is highly creating an adverse impact on the economy.

So this is what exactly you have to do. You need to drill down a little deeper than the first time research. Therefore, it is very important to detect fake news as it can adversely affect healthy patients.

If fake news gets popular, it is more likely that people will follow what’s written and prescribed in the article. Therefore, treatments can be delayed, or health departments can be highly misled, causing harm overall to the community.