Guides: Fake News, Misinformation, and Pseudoscience: Databases, Journals, and Articles

Getting Some Background

Fake News
Lengthy Wikipedia article providing information about origins and development of fake news including recent technological developments.
Misinformation
This Wikipedia article provides information about the history and causes of misinformation and its function and impact on the media and society.
Progaganda
An article from Wikipedia that outlines the different types of propaganda as well as propaganda techniques and models from the social sciences, including targeting children.
Pseudoscience
Another Wikipedia article that covers the etymology and history of the term, its boundaries with science and its effect on the fields of science and medicine.

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Sociology
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Library Resources for Finding Credible Information

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexisincluding U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types.
Newspaper Source Plus This link opens in a new window
Selected full text coverage for 245 newspapers, newswires and other sources.
Historic New York Times This link opens in a new window
Historic New York Times Newspaper collection, 1851 to 2010.

How to Spot Fake News

Avoiding Fake News

3 Tips for Avoiding Fake News in Science
Appearance, obviousness, and provenance are important factors in distinguishing genuine science from fake.
Calling BS: Data Reasoning in a Digital World
Two faculty members declare "the world is awash in BS" and teach a course in how to identify it, analyze it, and counter it effectively.
Democracy Needs You: How to Avoid Fake News
The Huffington Post suggests checking author, publisher, financing, audience, writing, date, sources, and credibility of content.
A Finder's Guide to Facts
NPR recommends making sure headline and article match, quotes are in context, the article refers to the present, the enemy is not generic, and that the source of the news can be identified.
How to Avoid Falling for Lies and Fake News
The BBC offers some suggestions for how to keep from being deluded by misinformation.
How to Avoid Getting Conned by Fake News Sites.
CNET explans how to identify and flag fake news sites.
Stanford Researchers Find Students Have Trouble Judging Credibility of Information Online
Digitally savvy students cannot distinguish advertising from news and are unable to determine whether the source of the news is credible.
What is Fake News? How You Can Spot It and What You Can Do to Stop It
The Guardian suggest the growing importance of social media is to blame, that many students cannot distinguish real from fake, and that we can take steps to keep it from spreading.

Resources for Fact Checking

FactCheck
Nonpartisan site for checking claims related to political facts.
Politifact
Pulitzer Prize-winning site used by journalists to check on facts in the world of politics and politicians.
Snopes
Independent site useful for checking the veracity of urban legends, rumors, and hearsay.
Truth or Fiction
A site devoted to uncovering the truth about rumors, hoaxes and urban legends.

Detecting Deepfake

Deepfakes and the New AI-Generated Fake Media Creation-Detection Arms Race
An article from Scientific American in which a researcher states that deepfake videos and imagery are getting more sophisticated but so is the technology used to detect them.

Fake News, Misinformation, and Pseudoscience Workshop

Video of the Fake News, Misinformation and Pseudoscience Workshop
With the advent of web technology, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish fake news and pseudoscience from legitimate information sources. This workshop focuses on how fake news and pseudoscience are created and spread, and how you can distinguish them from reputable information. You will learn principles that can be applied and what you can do to stop misinformation from spreading.
Workshop Evaluation Form