A study on fake news and how it spreads that was done at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published in the journal Science in 2018 produced shocking revelations. The statistics from the study indicated that fake news has the potential of spreading six times more than accurate news. It also revealed that 70% of fake news has a high probability of being shared. The primary means of spreading is social media.
These results point to the dangers of fake news in our day to day lives. Information is power since people make all their decision based on information. False news, therefore, implies that people will consume and act out of misinformation.
All the decisions made from fake news are therefore misinformed and wrong. That is how dangerous fake news can be. In this article, we are going to have a look at several ways of avoiding fake news in our social media feeds using several online tools like reverse phone look up and others. They include:
Tools to Check Quality and Timeliness
The quality and timeliness are one of the aspects of news. Quality refers to the value of information or news that is published in a particular site. If the information is reliable and trustworthy, then we can deem that news as quality.
Timeliness refers to the match between news published on a website and the time of its happening. The information posted on a website must be about current events and happenings.
The best online tools to check the quality of websites and timeliness of the news posted in them include Dareboost and Neebler. These two will assist you to know the reliable sites for news.
Tools to Assist You Identify News Sites That Are Likely To Be Biased or Fake
There are online databases that will help you identify the websites that are likely to be biased. The biased news websites do not report accurate information. They give a version that suits themselves or some other individuals to mislead the public or gain favor from a specific individual.
Such databases that can assist you in identifying biased news websites include the Online Database by Harvard’s Library which lists fake news sites and online fakes news sites that have been compiled by researchers.
The Sources and Citations Tools
These are tools that assist you in verifying and confirming the sources of news articles that have been posted in various sites. A truthful news story should have a defined source that can be used to verify the information on the article. On the citation issue, there should be a citation below the article for any information that has been extracted from another source.
If the news article is obtained from a secondary source and there is no citation, the story could be fake. The citation should also be verifiable since the writer can use imaginary citation as well.
Online tools that can be used to verify the sources and the citations include Google Search, Citation Machine and Bibme among many others.
Use of Reverse Phone Lookup
Phone number lookup is a phone number search service that assists you to find the owner of a phone number. When you key in the ten digits of the contact you are looking up, the tool will give you various useful information about the user of that phone number.
Such information includes the location, place of residence, e-mail address among other details that will assist you to know the identity of the person.
An excellent example of this tool is Spokeo reverse phone lookup. The tools assist in bringing together families, pets and insulating people from scammers. It helps you to compare the information the writer provides in the article and what the tool gives you and this way, you can know whether the writer is legit or not.
Don’t Spread Unverifiable News
The last tool is direct and straightforward. Do not spread the news that you cannot verify yourself. If you cannot produce evidence about some article or news feature, kill it when it reaches you.
In conclusion, fake news is becoming a significant problem in many countries today. It has misled people and made others make uninformed and wrong decisions. However, with the advancement in technology, everyone has a chance of ensuring that he/she consumes news that is truthful and verifiable.
Bio
Olga Andriichuk works as the content manager at Spokeo. Her field of expertise includes business, marketing, and personal growth. In her spare time, she enjoys yoga classes and exploring new destinations.
