WATCH OUT! English Prof Shows You How to Spot FAKE NEWS, MISINFORMATION AND BE MEDIA LITERATE

if you're living in this day and age then you are exposed to an inordinate number of unreliable reports fake news heavily biased data and misinformation every single day and if you're like most people you might not be the most media literate meaning you don't quite know how to identify problematic information and critically analyze it in the media or in your scholarly research for accuracy relevance and reliability and this is a skill that we all need hone no matter who we are because we Face a

problem that is very unique to our time namely that these days pretty much everyone has a platform to share their opinions their beliefs and their sometimes unverified facts at an unprecedented Pace we are blessed by and burdened with too much information too many resources to turn to news and information travel faster than they ever have before and suddenly you find yourself inundated with what seems like everything at once so if you're wondering how to filter all this without losing your sanit

y and time then stick around because as a professor of literature and writing one of my jobs is to teach my students how to identify the red flags of misinformation and heavily biased sources how to conduct smart responsible research and how to properly evaluate a source so I've divided this lecture into two videos because in this video I'll go over some ways to SP manipulated information and the red flags that you need to look out for avoid that fake news at all costs you guys and in the second

video I'm going to teach you how to efficiently conduct a search on Google share with you some resources that you can trust to find reliable sources and give you a simple checklist that you can use to measure and evaluate the reliability and credibility of any source and for those of you who just need something a little more tangible I've also provided a downloadable copy of this checklist in the description box in both videos please be sure to subscribe to my channel for more help with literat

ure writing rhetoric and research because knowing this kind of stuff can truly only help you in the long run now sometimes when you're reading an article or watching the news red flags are pretty obvious and it's clear that you need to steer away from this material ignore it or at least read it with a grain of salt however you should still still maintain some healthy skepticism towards sources that include seemingly verifiable or credible stuff but are not transparent about their research and fi

ndings basically it's your job as a reader not to just passively accept information because it seems factual in nature let me give you an example of what I'm talking about I am a doctor of philosophy because I have a PhD in English so I'm an expert on literature and scholarly writing but if someone were to include my very uninformed opinion about the possible relationship between GMO foods and cancer and quote me simply as Dr Whitney costers without explaining my credentials then that's extremel

y misleading right many people reading that article will likely take this information as accurate or as fact because a doctor made the statement if it's not stated otherwise the reader will reasonably assume that I am a medical doctor who has been researching ing how GMO foods do or don't contribute to cancer in other words if an expert is being quoted take a minute to dig a little deeper and investigate a bit more about them is their expertise relevant to the content can you find other studies

in which their research is utilized and an important factor to consider is does this person have particular ties to corporations politics or specific agendas that benefit from the statements that they're making while implicit biases are always going to exist reliable information should be free from extreme biases that by Nature compromise accuracy and objectivity with that said let's consider another way seemingly good information can be potentially problematic now one generally good way to iden

tify a reliable source is to turn to peer-reviewed journals this means that the information you're reading has been rigorously reviewed and accepted by experts in the that field of study but while generally this does mean the information is reliable like I said earlier it might still be good to know who you're dealing with let's take a real world example what if a certain well-known hospital or a corporation has a professional journal with reviewers that are employees Andor stakeholders then add

to that that the board of this hospital has members from Big Pharma and the same big Pharma companies have some of their board members from that hospital does this create a pipeline for articles that reinforce the agenda of the big Pharma company and the hospitals practices what if a research article shows contradictory information to what big Pharma and hospitals want is the likelihood of that article being published in that journal high or low this is one of the issues that questions the ethi

cal Integrity of some peer- review journals and reminds us that biases do exist even in information that may seem objective so it's always good to know who you're dealing with and to find additional separate sources to confirm the information that you're reading another way information may look verifiable but but may not be is when a writer incorporates a lot of statistics and numbers in their writing for whatever reason numbers and stats look very official and factual to the average reader desp

ite the fact that they may not be verified information it just seems to suggest that if a writer has all these numbers then they've done their research sure writers can throw them out here and there but ask yourself where did these numbers and stats come from how are they determined for instance if you read that one study finds that 77% of women like to drink iced coffee over hot coffee ask who exactly was surveyed I mean did they ask a wide variety of women across the country or only 18 to 24 y

ear old women from Hoka New Jersey so it's always a good idea to look at the sources of the information that you are about to accept as true now let's tackle our biggest source of information the internet here's the difference between the internet and published tangible written work if a work is in print then it's most likely been evaluated or fact checked by editors Publishers or expert reviewers before it was published that is not always the case with information posted on the internet let's j

ust take we Wikipedia for instance that free online encyclopedia that almost all of us have turned to at one point or another for information now while it might be a good way to find basic information don't rely on Wikipedia for in-depth research and total reliability in fact in their about section Wikipedia writes and I quote Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit and millions already have written collaboratively by largely Anonymous volunteers with Wikipedia articles can

be edited by anyone and anywhere with internet access Wikipedia has grown into the world's largest reference website attracting over a billion visitors monthly and it has more than 62 million articles in more than 300 languages and then it says that although Wikipedia maintains fundamental principles quote editors do not need to be familiar with them before contributing in fact anyone can edit Wikipedia's text references and images what is written is more important than who writes it end quote I

mean I quote all of this verbatim because Wikipedia is pretty transparent about the fact that you should be cautious with the information that you find on their website and that's just one example of the billions that exist on the internet so this is why your professor has probably already told you that Wikipedia and sites like it are not resources that you can use in that academic essay that you're expected to turn in next week when you're scouring the internet for information never mistake po

pularity for Quality just because a video an article or a website has millions of hits does not mean that it's purveying accurate information search engines do not assess the quality of a site's content that is your responsibility also be very careful of sponsored websites and links these can automatically seem like important relevant or good sources because they're often the first sites to come up in your search results however the reason these sites are popping up first is because the owners o

f the sponsored sites and links pay for this prime location it does not necessarily speak to the quality of their site and then there's that problem of fake news some fake news is very deliberate manipulation for instance some news is associated with websites that sound like legitimate news sources but actually aren't and some fake news is just spread through uninformed people just playing a game of telephone unwittingly disseminating stuff that was shared with them before you share that tweet t

hat says that Disney World is going to lower the drinking age to 18 because they're not here are a few ways to spot fake news so that you don't contribute to the ever growing problem of misinformation when you're reading something ask yourself who the author of the content is or what other Publications appear on the website that you're looking at if this information isn't available that's a red flag because it forces you to ask why your ability to research these sources is being curtailed in oth

er words why can't you find out more about this author their associations and their work and similarly a lot of fake news or misinformation will cite generic sources of authority and leave it at that for instance you might see things like the medical community agrees that this claim is true or studies show that this claim is true well who are these members of this medical community or what are these studies why why aren't they sharing these important details and what is the context in which thes

e generic statements are being made if you're reading an article on the benefits of a particular exercise device by an author who's identified vaguely as a Health Fitness specialist then it's likely that the site is more interested in promoting the product than sharing scientifically sound and unbiased information and speaking of context if there are images included in the piece that you're reading find out if they're original to that article you can actually do a reverse image search to see if

an image has been manipulated and if it's appeared elsewhere or in different context on the internet another thing that you should do when trying to verify fake news is look at the website that this dubious Source appears on are there even working links is it a real website sometimes creators will try to trick you by adding a doco to an otherwise familiar and reputable site like cbs.com or they'll use a zero in place of the O in washingtonpost.com also look at the headline or the title of the in

formation you're reading is it deliberately using outrageous language as clickbait your best bet is to look for something that is neutral if you're already feeling extreme emotions before even reading the article it could be because you're looking at fake news fake news is generally designed to make you feel an extreme way so that you're more likely to read it and share it out of outrage excitement or whatever so take a minute to check reputable sources to see if they're reporting the same infor

mation other things you can do to aoid to avoid fake news is to check the date of the publication because sometimes fake news is simply old news that's been revitalized in a time that is no longer relevant and the last suggestion that I'll give you is to read and think critically about whatever is in front of you and if you're not quite sure how to do that then I've got a video on that very subject just for you right here and Linked In the description box below so now that I've given you the war

nings and shown you some of the red flags on how to identify problematic information head on over to the second part of my lecture on how to effectively research and evaluate a source I'll see you guys there