Fake News: Social Media & Images

Fake news spreads through sharing links on social media. Evaluate before posting. 
Fake news is spread through fake social media accounts powered by social bots. See The Rise of Social Bots

Social media platforms cultivate complex relationships with their users, who are both creators and consumers of content. Add integrated advertising (like sponsored posts) into the mix, and it can be daunting to figure out what's true.

Strategies for evaluating social media:

• Be aware of the problem: Social media may be competing for your attention through outlandish claims, and sometimes with the intent of manipulating you.
• Think critically: If it sound too good (or sometimes too bad) to be true, it probably is. People are also less likely to critically evaluate news share by their friends, so misleading news stories end up getting spread throughout social networks with a lot of momentum. 
• Stop the spread of fake news: You can do your part in halting the spread of fake news by not spreading it further on social media, through email, or in conversation.

Images

Not every image you encounter is so obviously FAKE as this quote  above, attributed to Abraham Lincoln - so be skeptical with online images and photographs too!

Often photographs are recycled and/or doctored to fuel interest and provide visual "proof" for fake news. Knowing how to do a reverse image search can help you identify most photographs like this. 

No, President Bush is not really trying to read a book upside down. This image is also FAKE!

Hoax Photo Archive