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Top trending misinformation tactics your students should know
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| Although misinformation topics and trends may change day by day or even minute by minute, methods of manipulating have mostly stayed the same. Image credit: News Literacy Project. |
I’ve seen my share of falsehoods during my career as a professional fact-checker and let me tell you something: I. Am. Exhausted. A flood of falsehoods washes over social media every day and there aren’t enough fact-checkers in the world to hold back the waters. Which is why news literacy educators are so essential! By teaching students how misinformation is made and why it spreads, and giving them a few basic fact-checking skills, a growing number of people will be able to critically examine viral claims in their feeds and prevent themselves and people they know from being misled. (On a side note, it also means less work for me. 😉)
Every day new falsehoods are created and spread online. But while the topics change from day to day, the methods of manipulation have mostly stayed the same. Images and media are presented out of context, photos and videos are digitally manipulated (including a growing trend of altering audio tracks) and there are baseless, fabricated claims that gain traction simply because they’re attributed to a credible source.
It is important for us to push back against misinformation because these deceptive practices distort our view of the world. Misinformation influences our politics, our health decisions and even how we view our neighbors. And here’s the kicker: it has this effect even when we don’t fall for it — because it influences others who live, work and vote in our communities.
So what can we do? To start, we can learn how these falsehoods are created and which emotional biases they repeatedly attempt to exploit. Here are three of the most common tactics I’ve observed being used to spread misinformation online these days. |
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