Tools used to detect fake news (Part:1)

Anyone can easily do fact-checking with the help of the internet using some simple tools at home, for free. But before that, let’s take a general idea about fake news, infodemic, etc. We will find out the tools used to detect fake news.

Headaches when fake news

After the US election in 2016, the word fake news started catching the world’s attention. Thanks to then US President Donald Trump, the word fake news has repeatedly found its place in the news. Trump regularly vented his frustrations on Twitter with fake news detector tools.

These reports have no reliable source and are sometimes disseminated for specific purposes, such as political or economic gain.

But it was Hillary Clinton, not Trump, who first introduced the word fake news. Of course, Trump as President and John Adams, the second president of the United States, expressed frustration with fake news.

In other words, fake news is not a recent idea. The discovery of Gutenberg’s printing press led to the proliferation of newspapers, and since then, the possibility of fake news has arisen.

The modern form of fake news has been seen since 2016. In the middle of that year, some young people in a Macedonian city started spreading fake news about the US election and Donald Trump on Facebook. Their motives were primarily economic; Make more money by publishing sensational fake news.

Since then, we’ve seen horrific forms of fake news and still do during the Coronavirus epidemic. At this time, social media has been flooded with fake news and rumors.

Infodemic: Knowledge is lost with more information

The two words Information and Epidemic have been broken down to form the word infodemic. This means that when the amount of information increases exponentially and it spreads rapidly around, the real and necessary information from so much information is often not available or it takes a lot of effort to get it.

The reason for comparing infodemic with the epidemic is that it is also a kind of epidemic, an information epidemic. Because in this case too, the information spreads like a plague. Infodemic has the potential to cause serious negative effects and chaos in a combination of false information, misinformation, distorted information, etc.

The term infodemic was first used by political scientist and journalist David Ruthkoff in a 2003 column on The SARS virus in The Washington Post.

Fact-checking: Verification of information

According to the Cambridge Dictionary definition, fact-checking refers to the process of verifying the accuracy of all the facts presented in a text, news, statement, etc. Fact-checking is verifying the overall accuracy of a piece of information by doubting its veracity.

While fact-checking is primarily concerned with journalism, it is and should be done on a personal level. Many organizations and news agencies are working for fact-checking, but we have to do the fact-checking of the information we need from our surroundings.

AFP recently published a tutorial on fact-checking. It shows the use of some readily available tools for fact-checking. These tools will be discussed in detail in our current article. But before that, first of all, some general skills of fact-checking were mentioned.

Finding the source

Be aware of the source of the information you receive. In the case of news, keep in mind from which sources the news is being collected. The source from which you are gathering your information should also consider whether the source has any instance of providing false information in the past. Try to gather your information from multiple sources.

Crosscheck

Repeat your data with multiple sources. If you want to collect any information from the internet, check it again and again and then make sure. Try to get closer to the original source of information. For example, if you see a screenshot of a tweet, you can go to Twitter to verify its authenticity and confirm it from that account. If you have a lot of old tweets, you can use Twitter’s advanced search option.

Comments

Helpful information can often be found in the comment box of a post. As is often the case in the comment box of a viral or popular post, some of the comments are confidently made so that you can get to the truth from the source if you want, or at least you get the idea that what is being claimed in the caption or inside of the post may be false.

Giving an example will make the point clear. There is a video on YouTube with the caption, “Assassination of the President of such and such a state during a parade, protection for a little while.” The video really shows something like that. But looking at the comment box, one wrote, “I’m going to let you know that this was a practice.”

So, one thing is for sure. There is some noise in the claim of this video. In this case, you can use multiple methods for fact-checking. First of all, you can see the picture of the President of the mentioned country by going to the internet, if any match is found. He could ask Google if an assassin had ever attacked him using his name. Or, you can analyze the video using the tool. How to analyze a YouTube video is discussed in detail later in the article.

URL

The main link of a website is called URL (URL: Uniform Resource Locator). In many cases, the malicious sites of the known and popular websites are changed to create fake sites. If you don’t notice it well, it doesn’t catch your eye suddenly. Especially when reading the news, you have to keep in mind whether the URL is correct or you are reading fake newspaper news.

Come on

It is very important to read the About Us section of different pages, websites, etc. Suppose you start reading an article as news, but that website is basically a fun site. This is clearly stated in the About Us section of these sites. Therefore, it is important to look at the pages related to any website, page itself.

Satisfaction is not in the headlines.

Clickbait headlines are often given to get the reader’s attention. But when you read the whole story inside, you can see that the essence of the news is quite conflicting with the headline. So one should not believe the whole thing just by reading the headline. And just reading the title, without reading the details inside, sharing something is a great job.