How do you figure out if the news you are reading, watching, or even sharing is not a fake one? How can you spot if a statement from a famous person has not been fabricated? How can you be sure if the news you have just read does not carry any negative motive that you are totally unaware of?
Fake news, defined by the New York Times as the fake articles which deliberately fabricate to deceive the readers with the goal of profiting through clickbait. Clickbait is content whose main intention is to draw attention and prompt the visitors to click on a link to a particular web page. It is quite possible that the website you visit for news does not circulate accurate information. But, how would you spot its authenticity?
Evidently, With a scant knowledge about the procedure it seems quite complicated to single out the adverse purposes behind any news content. In this regard, you need to find better tools to investigate the authenticity.
Let’s have a look into five effective websites that you can use to prevent yourself from being deceived by fake news and misinformation.
The Factual
If you want a news portal where it offers credible news and information, you can rely on “The Factual”. It operates with an algorithm that consistently monitors credibility of any news concerning four aspects- the site quality, author’s expertise, the quality and diversity of the sources and article’s tone. It rates approximately 10,000+ news articles daily without any human involvement into the procedure.
You can have its services by becoming a member. Afterwards, you can get your hands on numerous reliable news articles through its newsletter, website, mobile app or in the browser extension to check each article’s credibility that you read.
Snopes
You can turn to Snopes if you are looking for the authenticity of any latest news which has turned out to be trendy amongst a wide audience. With the help of its large-scale fact-checking editors and researchers, it fact-checks famous topics such as- any particular text that has been publicized online, social media posts, dubious images or memes, videos etc. Eventually, it presents the news with several classifications: True, Mostly True, Mixture, Mostly False, False, Unproven, Outdated and so on.
You can visit the website and get a free subscription, if you want to get its newsletter on trendy topics every day!
To visit, click here.
News Literacy Course Pack, Center for News Literacy
Do you want to advance your news evaluation capacity as well as improve your critical thinking? The course offered by News Literacy Course Pack can provide you with needed training to develop your skills.. It features compelling topics which can help you perceive the differences between fact and rumor.
For instance- You can learn proper accession and evaluation of any sources. You can be able to analyze biased information. Moreover, you would understand different characteristics of the economics of the media industry from this course. It is open for everyone to go through its contents, but the full course credit will require your enrollment.
You can have a glance at their website by clicking here.
Bot Sentinel
For any regular twitter-user, this website “Bot Sentinel” can help to maintain a healthy online platform without fake accounts, toxic posts as well as online harassment. With the assistance from machine learning and AI, the website publicly features detailed reports of Twitter accounts if they are trying to circulate disinformation online and torment other accounts. They fixate on precise actions that are considered inappropriate by Twitter rules and provide a score between 0 to 100% . The higher the score the more chances of these accounts to be involved in targeted harassment, online bullying, or try to hoist misleading strategies to induce discord.
You can visit the website through the following link and check out how it operates. Here is the website link for you.
Climate Feedback
Nowadays, all of us are trying to remain in touch with the news related to climate change. Unfortunately, there is a widespread circulation of scientific misinformation on climate issues that we can not distinguish at all. In this regard, “Climate Feedback” can assist you. By separating facts from fiction with the help of a worldwide network of scientists, it can help to shape your perception of climate issues with accurate scientific explanations. The editors of Climate Feedback pick out any viral news about climate and try to evaluate it with the help of other scientists. After a comprehensive review, they evaluate the content on the basis of scientific logic if it is accurate or not.
You can visit their website and get a glimpse of their reviewed articles and claims through this link.
In order to be a smart information consumer of the 21st century, it is mandatory for us to go for the tools that would help us to get accurate information. A good news platform would adequately provide a holistic understanding of any fact. Therefore, start your experience with those aforementioned websites and look for more edifying ones similar to it.
