NLP’s Rice offers advice for Mozilla’s ‘Misinfo Monday’ on Instagram

Ebonee Rice, vice president of NLP’s educator network, offers advice in the Mozilla Foundation’s Aug. 17 installment of the Instagram series, Misinfo Monday, on avoiding misinformation.

The segment How to Tell Fact from Crap in the Newsfeed includes important tips, such as remembering to “search your feelings” because misinformation likes to prey on emotions. The piece asks: “Have you ever shared an article before reading the whole thing? It’s because your emotions about the article led you astray.”

Rice advises: “It’s important to take a beat. When you see a piece of news that causes you to have an emotional reaction, such as laughter, anger or sorrow, take a minute. If something causes a visceral reaction, pause before your emotions take over and you share something immediately.”

Other guidance includes scrolling through story comments to see if other readers have fact-checked content or doing independent research. The piece concludes by asking the question: “So how can you make sure you don’t share something that’s misleading or even flat out wrong?”

In answering the question, Rice says, “whenever you’re emotional about something, just don’t share it in the moment. If you see an article that looks really interesting to you, bookmark it until you have the time to read through it. It’s not going anywhere!”