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News/Media Literacy, Fact-Checking, and Popping Your Filter Bubble: Home

How to Use this Research Guide

This site is intended to help you understand and address mis- and disinformation and improve your own information consumption habits. This homepage explores what mis- and disinformation look like and how this information can spread. The Fact-Checking page provides easy-to-use steps to determine the quality and validity of information online. Discover some options to intentionally seek out a variety of viewpoints on our Popping Your Filter Bubble page. And stay up-to-date on the latest research and expert opinions on our Additional Readings page. 

If you are using Internet Explorer and have problems with some of the links, try a different browser.  Those links work better in Chrome.

Help! My News is Fake!

Did a family member call to tell you that liberals hate science?  Did an article pop up in your social media feed detailing how a new pesticide is going to kill us all?  Did one of your friends breathlessly tell you that president Donald Trump was going to pardon mass shooter Dylann Roof?  You might have heard any or all of these stories, but there's one thread connecting all of them: they're not true.

The ability to tell accurate news from false or misleading content is an important skill that you'll use for the rest of your life.  This guide will give you valuable insight in telling fact from fiction online, plus a chance to exercise your newfound skills. 

Why should you care about whether or not your news is accurate?

  1. You deserve the truth.  You are smart enough to make up your own mind - as long as you have the real facts in front of you.  You have every right to be insulted when you read fake news, because you are in essence being treated like you do not know how to distinguish fact from fiction.
  2. Poor information can destroy your credibility.  If your arguments are built on bad information, it will be much more difficult for people to believe you in the future.
  3. Poor information can hurt you, and a lot of other people.  Purveyors of fake and misleading medical advice like Mercola.com and NaturalNews.com help perpetuate myths that have been debunked by reliable sources (see research on AIDS denialism and the lack of connection between vaccines and autism).  These sites are frequently visited and their misinformation is dangerous.
  4. Accurate and timely information can benefit you. If you want to make decisions about your family's health care, you want to find evidence-based recommendations. If you want to buy stock in a company, you want to read accurate articles about that company so you can invest wisely.  If you are planning on voting in an election, you want to read as much accurate information on a candidate so you can vote for the person who best represents your ideas and beliefs.

How Do You Know?

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Fake News Educational Games

Breaking Down Information Sources

Librarian

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Janna Dosh
Contact:
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Credits

This guide was adapted with permission from OSU-Stillwater.  Thanks to Matt Upson, Director of Undergraduate Instruction and Outreach Services, for the information!

Reusing this Guide

Please feel free to share this guide with others.  If you are a librarian or teacher, you are welcome to use this guide and its contents for your own purposes.  The content in this guide was adapted from a guide created by KT Lowe at Indiana University East and the Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers textbook by Mike Caulfield of Washington State University Vancouver.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Please note that permission is not given for any part of this LibGuide to be used for any for-profit endeavors, including publication.