There are various motivations behind the creation of fake news: poor journalism, parody, provocation, passion, partisanship, profit, political influence, or propaganda (see categories of fake news).17
False information may then be disseminated in various ways (unwittingly or deliberately).
Some of the ways that fake news or disinformation can spread are: shared on social media; amplified by journalists (this means that some journalists may pick up news stories on social media that are fake, but they still publish the stories without checking the facts, leading to more and more people receiving the fake news); pushed out by loosely connected groups attempting to influence public opinion and spread as part of sophisticated disinformation campaigns using bots and troll factories; or simply as clickbait to make money. Fake news often uses sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines.
Take note that intentionally misleading and deceptive fake news is different from obvious satire or parody, which is intended to amuse rather than mislead its audience. But the “satire” label is also sometimes used intentionally to spread fake news (see below).
Fake news takes all forms. Any format that can convey information can also convey disinformation: print, online, podcasts, YouTube videos, radio shows, images. Fake news has become a daily phenomenon in the changing media landscape where readers are becoming publishers themselves. Hence, being able to spot fake news and assess the quality of news are increasingly becoming important skills.
When it comes to evaluating content online, there are various types of fake or misleading news we need to be aware of. These include the following:
Clickbait: These are stories that are deliberately fabricated or exaggerated to gain more website visitors and increase advertising revenue for websites. Clickbait stories use sensationalist headlines to grab attention and drive click throughs to the publisher website, normally at the expense of truth or accuracy. This is an unethical business model but many people use it. They deliberately create fake news to earn clicks and then make money from advertising.
Propaganda: Stories that are created to deliberately mislead audiences, promote a biased point of view or a particular political cause or agenda.
Satire/Parody: Many websites and social media accounts publish fake news stories and claim it is entertainment and parody. But they hide the “parody” label so that many people will in fact think the story is true.
Sloppy journalism: Sometimes, journalists may publish a story with unreliable information or without checking all the facts, which can mislead audiences.
Misleading headings: Stories that are not completely false can be distorted using misleading or sensationalist headlines. These types of news can spread quickly on social media sites where only headlines and small snippets of the full article are displayed on audience newsfeeds.
Biased/slanted news: Many people are drawn to news or stories that confirm their own beliefs or biases, and fake news can prey on these biases. Social media news feeds tend to display news and articles that they think readers would like based on their personalised searches.
Conspiracy theory: Sources that are well-known promoters of kooky conspiracy theories.
Rumour mills: Sources that traffic in rumours, gossip, innuendo, and unverified claims.
Hate news: Sources that actively promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination.
There are four broad categories of fake news, according to Media Professor Melissa Zimdars (Merrimack College) in the USA:
Category 1: Fake, false, or regularly misleading websites that are shared on social media. Some of these websites may rely on “outrage” by using distorted headlines and decontextualised or dubious information to generate likes, shares, and profits. The information may be entirely fabricated.
Category 2: Websites that may circulate misleading and/or potentially unreliable information. These websites may intentionally misinterpret facts or misrepresent data.
Category 3: Websites that occasionally use clickbait headlines and social media descriptions. The information may be accurate or partially accurate but use an alarmist title to get their audience’s attention.
Category 4: Satire/comedy sites, which can offer important critical commentary on politics and society but have the potential to be shared as actual/literal news. This may be a critique on a topic.
How to spot fake news
Below are some steps you can follow to help you spot fake news.
Consider your source
Who published the story? Real news is published by trustworthy news sources with a reputation for checking their facts.
What claims does the news story make? Are these backed up by facts or evidence that you can double-check? If you cannot find any facts or evidence, take care – this might be a fake news story.
Does the story include more than one point of view? Fake news stories often only present one side of the story.
How does the story make you feel? If the story makes you feel angry or frightened, be careful. Fake news stories often use your emotions to try to influence what you believe.
If you think a story might be fake news, then do more research. Ask more questions and find answers from another source.
Check the author
A simple web search will often help you find information about the author. If you cannot find the author’s name easily, or if the author’s name appears on other websites that seem fake (based on the other steps to identify fake news or disinformation), then think twice. If the author’s name appears on the sites of well known news media or information providers, then you can rest easy.
What do you know about the author? Is the author an authority on the subject? A recognised author in their subject area?
What do you know about the organisation? Publications by well-known and respected organisations are generally more reliable than material published by vague charitable foundations with dubious or unclear objectives.
Does the author or organisation receive funding from sponsors? Sponsorship is not necessarily a problem but be aware of any commercial interests that may be involved.
Can you assess the quality of the publication? Fake news websites often contain many spelling errors and are often badly designed.
Check the date
When was the piece written? Is there a date? Does it make sense (not 31 June 2101)?
Is it current? The term “current” usually refers to recent events or developments. To determine whether information is current, check whether it still reflects the present situation. Remember, even if a book was written long ago, it might still be relevant.
Check your biases
Bias is a tendency to believe that some people, ideas, etc., are better than others, which often results in treating some people unfairly.
Explicit bias refers to attitudes and beliefs (positive or negative) that we consciously or deliberately hold and express about a person or a group.
Implicit bias includes attitudes and beliefs (positive or negative) about other people, ideas, or issues that we are not aware of ourselves and cannot control but that are affecting our opinions and behaviour.
Confirmation bias is our subconscious tendency to seek and interpret information in ways that affirm our existing beliefs, ideas and expectations. It mostly occurs around beliefs and ideas that we feel strongly about.
Read beyond
The web pages shown on the next page may be legitimate, but they should not be mistaken for impartial news sources:
Opinion pieces/editorials may be written by journalists or experts, but they should be clearly marked as opinion pieces and not be mistaken for an impartial news report.
Native advertising or “sponsored content” are there to sell, not to inform. Wikipedia defines native advertising as “a type of advertising, mostly online, that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases, it manifests as either an article or video, produced by an advertiser with the specific intent to promote a product, while matching the form and style which would otherwise be seen in the work of the platform's editorial staff”.
Press releases are public relations pieces from a company or an organisation; they often are marked “For immediate release”.
Publications by advocacy organisations or think tanks can be useful materials but they should be understood to represent a particular point of view. It would be wise to seek other viewpoints for a more balanced understanding of the issues.
Supporting sources
Use various sources: see if the news has also been reported by other newspapers, television news, online articles.
This is often one of the easiest ways to detect fake news. If the news is really incredible, really big news, it is guaranteed that there will be many news platforms reporting on it. It will not be on only one site. For example, if aliens really landed in Johannesburg, then all the news media in South Africa will write about it, fast. So, if you see news about an alien invasion on only one website, you can know for sure it is fake!
If you see unbelievable news on social media only, chances are very high that the news is fake.
Is it a joke?
The purpose of satire or parody is to entertain and perhaps to persuade, but these kinds of sources should not be mistaken for news sources. They obviously differ from intentionally misleading and deceptive fake news.
Ask an expert
Ask a library expert, another journalist, or a subject expert.
Use online sites that check facts and ask them to check something for you. The most well-known one in South Africa is Africa Check and one can also use Snopes for more international news.
Ask academics or other people with expert knowledge.
The infographic below, from the International Federation of Library Associations, shows the eight steps discussed above that one can use to spot fake news.
The South African fact-checking site Africa Check also has a handy guide with specific tools useful in the South African and African context that you can use to help you recognise fake news and disinformation when you see it. (Reproduced here in full, with permission from Africa Check. The guide is also available here.)
Think of the most horrible or weird thing that could happen to people in the news or in your country. A petrol bomb thrown in the car of the judge presiding over the Oscar Pistorius case? South African universities now offering a BSc degree in Witchcraft? Write it down, post it to your website, and voilà! You have now joined the ranks of the fake news websites that are mushrooming across South Africa. These websites exist to make money from the ads they display, media attorney Nicholas Hall explained to Cape Talk Radio. The more outrageous the story, the higher the traffic to their sites, and the more money they can make.
So what is the harm in fooling people and making a buck from that? Besides causing pain and suffering to people mentioned in these fake stories, they can harden stereotypes and lead people to make poor health decisions, among other reasons. Facebook is the most important weapon in these websites’ arsenal. You may have heard about the social media network’s “algorithm”. That is just a fancy word for the calculations Facebook does to work out which posts are the most popular. The more people click on a post, comment on or share it, the more people Facebook shows it to – and that is how a post can go viral.
Africa Check’s steps to recognise fake news
We have all become journalists in some way, writes the editor-in-chief of Eyewitness News, Katy Katopodis. Every internet user now has the power to publish stories or videos that only journalists used to publish.
As our tools for getting and spreading information become more sophisticated, so should we. It starts with a simple step: pause for a minute and look closely at the thing you want to share. Then follow some of the tips below, shared by MyBroadband.
Click on the website’s “about us” section or look for a disclaimer
Many fake news websites attempt to soften their dishonesty by saying that they cannot guarantee that their content is true, either in the “about us” section or in a “disclaimer”. One can usually find these links at the top of the website or right at the bottom. Sometimes there are obvious spelling or grammatical mistakes, such as in the example below.
Look for a “satire” or “fauxtire” label
Genuine satirical websites – like South Africa’s ZANEWS – try to make one laugh about real news events. Dreaming up false stories is not satire, but labelling them as such is another way in which fake news websites attempt to get away with their lies.
Check if the site is an Interactive Advertising Bureau member
The member base of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) includes all of South Africa’s big-name media platforms such as News24, Mail & Guardian, IOL, and Daily Maverick. Look for the IAB logo at the bottom of a website or search the bureau’s membership directory. If a site is not listed there, it might mean that the site distributes fake news. However, do remember that many legitimate sites are not members of the IAB, so also use some of the other tools to check the legitimacy of a site. It might not be a member of the IAB but might still be trustworthy.
Search for the owner of the website
By typing in the website address on a lookup website, you can see who registered the address (called a domain). Compare the results for News24 and Mzansi Stories: News24’s registration clearly shows the address, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses of its owners, Media24.
By contrast, Mzansi Stories hides behind a domain registration company, making them virtually untraceable. This is, of course, not a guarantee that the site is fake but should set alarm bells off. Use these lookup websites to see who registered a website:
The internet has the potential for great good and terrible harm. It is in your hands. Play an active role in limiting harm by vetting the content you want to share. If you do not have time to follow the verifications tips listed before, rather not share the story.
Summary
This chapter explained how important it is as a journalist to evaluate information, mostly because you do not want to redistribute fake news by thinking it is a story. If you always evaluate information and follow all the other steps discussed in the previous chapters of this book, such as never writing one-source stories, making sure that you made the correct ethical decisions and ensuring that your stories go through the correct newsrooms processes, your stories will always be credible and based on facts. If you have read the book up to this point, you should now have enough skills and knowledge to start creating news stories by yourself. The next chapter shows you how you can be an independent journalist by working for yourself.
Reference
This section adapted from Fake news. 2021 and Information literacy, 2021. Libguides, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Available at: https://libguides.rug.nl/fakenews and https://libguides.rug.nl/c.php?g=545900&p=3744353), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
