Fact-Checking: The Ways We Can Fight Fake News
Donald Harvey Marks, physician scientist
The turmoil that swirls beneath
Fact-checking means verifying the accuracy of facts that are presented in a tangible context. Fact-checking can be done within organizations, or individually; both are important. Here are some tips on how to do fact-checking.
personal blog https://bit.ly/3LDCQKP
We have talked about fake news in one of our previous posts http://bit.ly/3MIBUGb. Besides that, we also have discussed how a virtual Infodemic http://bit.ly/3G8rCMW has been taking over the Internet gradually. These are just two obvious examples of how the advancement of technology can affect us in a negative way, about which we seemingly can do nothing much.
But, is that really the case? Can we just not fight against fake news? Or, do we always have to dig in an ocean of information just to get what we exactly need? If there is a problem, there ought to be a solution too. Even the Covid-19 pandemic got to have a cure at last.
Just like that, we have a solution here when it comes about fake news and all the internet issues of trust. This solution is known as fact-checking. Not exactly an ultimate solution, if you want to be utmost critical, but fact-checking can help a lot figuring out differences between real versus fake; what to trust and or not.
What is fact-checking
The Cambridge Dictionary defines fact-checking as the process of checking the correctness of all the facts presented in a piece of writing, a news article, a speech, etc. It can be regarded as an essential practice of modern journalism. There are online organizations that are devoted to fact checking such as www.factcheck.org
Fact-checking occurs when someone looks at every single fact of any sort of information with a cautious eye to verify the accuracy of those facts, and information. Although, fact-checking is primarily associated with journalism, it can be done by anyone. The serious and big-time fact-checking works are being done by major news organizations, but, every person needs to have a basic idea of fact-checking. As we pass our day with social media, we have to be aware of not being fooled by fake news.
Why fact-checking is important
According to a 2016 survey by Pew Research Center, many Americans conceded that fake news is having an impact on their regular practice of getting news. Some of them even admitted that they themselves shared fake news either knowingly or unknowingly. It’s been almost five years since the research has been conducted, and the amount of fake news has also gone skyrocketing since then.
Well, it’s true that the discourse of fact-checking got remarkable attention during all these years, but, most of it was organization-based initiatives. But, those organizations, news outlets, independent fact-checking corporations are not enough to keep the internet free from fake news.
The importance of individual fact-checking is a trenf now. It’s important because not every fact is being verified by dedicated institutions. We can not expect to have them cleansing the whole Internet for us. We have to think globally, act individually to check our own facts.
It’s a duty. People who use the Internet are often addressed as netizens, the citizens of the net world. Just like a real-life citizen has a lot of duties to perform for the sake of their country, the same goes for the netizens. They have a very sacred duty of keeping their virtual world pure, real in a sense. Individual fact-checking can help achieve the task.
How do you fact-check
Using the buzzword often and everywhere is cool, but, it’s important we actually know how to do our own fact-checking. It’s neither an easy nor hard asjob, all we need to do is be smart about believing facts or information. Here are some tips to do your own fact-check.
Check the source, look for more
When looking at new information, say, a video, a news, an article, watch for the source. Is it trustworthy? How do you know that? Use your instincts. Does it look trustworthy? Does the source have any previous allegation of sharing fake news? Click on the source link, if available, to see what other contents came out of that source.
Another thing you can do is look for several sources for the topic you are engaging with. For example, if you are reading a news that arises doubt in your mind about its reliability, go search for it on the Internet. See if you can get the same news from different sources. If that happens, there is a major possibility that the news is correct. That’s why it is better to get your news from reliable, widely regarded, prominent news organizations (NYT, BBC, AFP, Bloomberg).
Experts say, check everything double, tripple, even quadruple. Are you ready to be this careful with your facts?
Think before sharing. Sharing is caring, but, sharing misinformation = spreading can bring the opposite. Share only if you think it’s really needed to be shared with others. If somebody shares something with you, ask for the source. Don't spread rumors.
Look at the comments
Specially on social media, comments are a great way to get a basic idea on the origin of something. Some comments may state what exactly is going on in the contents. But, do not believe that before you search for the claim on the Internet.
Check the URL
Check out the URL of the site you are on, because there are sites that look exactly similar to some popular websites, or newspapers’ websites. These fake sites only change a letter or number in the URL, and, at first glance, some might miss out the big difference.
Read About Us section
Social media pages, groups etc can have a bigger audience, huge likes and comments. Always check the About section of every page or group. For example, a satire page (The Onion) may share news that can be believed as real news on the basis of context, but, the About section will always clarify the original purpose of that page.
Use Google reverse image search
Fake images (Deep Fake) are one of the worst kinds of fake contents. Images have more power to manipulate people’s minds (seeing is believing) than anything in text. Google can help you to get to the origin of a photo that you consider to be fake. Google reverse image search will show you more results of the same image.
Open the Chrome browser on your desktop. There you will see the “image” text on the upper right corner. Click on it, and a new page will reload. There you can upload an image and google will bring you results that contain the same image. You can then browse those links and get an idea about the originality of the image. Note that, if you face difficulty to open the image search box, or you are using your phone, you can directly access it by using https://images.google.com/ link.
Read the whole news
Headlines can be deceiving. Some headlines appear as clickbait (define), some are totally confusing, and some differ with the content inside the news. So, don’t keep your faith on headlines. Sometimes, the news can be completely different than what the headline might refer to. So, before believing, or sharing, we really must first open the actual news article.
Control your biases
You can idolize something, somebody, but, facts are facts. Sometimes, facts can conflict with or even contradict with your belief or ideology. Still, don’t let confirmation bias take over you and blind you.
Bottom line
Technically speaking, fact-checking is not relatively a new practice that emerged in recent years, rather, it can be dated back to the era of Ronald Reagan. The style of investigative journalism does not hold much differences than the process of fact-checking; both have one primary goal, to figure out what is real. And, the American investigative journalism saw its best practice during the Watergate scandal. Facts have always been manipulated, it’s just more common and reachable now.
Additional information
Reliable news sources used by Donald Harvey Marks http://bit.ly/3kECPvr
Fake News: Everything You Need to Know, by Donald Harvey Marks
Best Online Free Fact-Checking Tools, by Donald Harvey Marks
Fact-Checking: The Ways We Can Fight Fake News (this article), by Donald Harvey Marks
Infodemic: the epidemic of information, by Donald Harvey Marks
The Curious Case of Deepfakes, by Donald Harvey Marks
Infodemic - the epidemic of excess information
by Donald Harvey Marks, physician and scientist
Reason, ethics, health justice, 3rd generation Veteran
We are awash in an #Infodemic, where information acts like an epidemic, spreading rapidly while containing mis- and disinformation [fake news] like digital viruses, leading people struggling to find the real solution of a problem.
Théodore Géricault : The Raft of the Medusa
"Water, water, every where, Nor a drop to drink." These are the lines from the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The poor sailor of the becalmed ship had plenty of water around him, but could not drink any because no one can drink salt water. These lines have their own subtle meaning: despite having a lot (news, information), sometimes you may not benefit from it. A large quantity of something might turn out to be worthless in the time of need.
The same is also true about information. We are living in a world awash with information. There is a saying in mass communication study that goes like this: you cannot not communicate. This means you are always communicating; it can be with some other person, with a non-living thing, or even with yourself. In the same way, we can not not process information. We need information to keep living; it's an important intangible part of our life.
Yet, nothing excessive is good. We need information for our cognitive demand, but when there is too much information, that can be dangerous, let alone helpful to us. This problem with a huge amount of unnecessary information is what we mean by 'the Infodemic.'
What is Infodemic?
The word Infodemic comes from two different words: information, and epidemic. An epidemic refers to a disease that spreads in a faster way, with great power of taking out some considerable numbers of lives. A cure to any epidemic is hard to find. Analogously, when an excessive amount of information travels in a rapid way [becomes viral] and reaches out to almost every corner of the world, that is called an Infodemic.
The most dangerous part of infodemic is when it contains misinformation, as well as disinformation [fake news], same as a pandemic or an epidemic containing deadly viruses. This mixture of accurate and false information makes it harder to find the real information about something. As attributed to Mark Twain, “It is easier to fool someone than to convince them they have been fooled.” Due to easier access to information technology, infodemic has become a growing concern nowadays.
The origin of Infodemic
This problem of information-availability has something to do with a real-life epidemic. Infodemic was first heard in 2003, when a political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf wrote about SARS in the Washington Post.
The 2002-2004 SARS outbreak caused a lot of suffering. It was a time of emerging technology; people had much more access to information than any time before. Hence, besides accurate and real information, there has been a crisis of false information, and people had to go through the trouble to get to the authentic information. In his article, David Rothkopf considered the Infodemic as a second epidemic that had its implications far better than the SARS epidemic itself.
Covid-19 and infodemic
As of today, we have seen the worst-case scenario of Infodemic in this coronavirus pandemic. We are now living in the era of social media, with a giant network that is combined and managed by the Internet. Everyday, information is being generated, and it will increase exponentially.
Of course, people are worried and anxious about the deadly COVID-19 virus. They want to know everything about it, its cures, its protection. The easiest tool at hand is using the Internet. People will just open those search engines to look at anything. That's when inaccurate information blinds them, and citizens struggle to find a solution to what they are looking for. Many influential people have blamed the social medial companies for hyping disinformation to make more money, and there have been calls for greater regulation. In response, many social medial companies have made serious attempts to regulate disinformation and to provide sources of valid information.
The World Health Organization (WHO) showed its concern about infodemic at the early stage of the covid-19 outbreak. In a joint statement with other sister organizations, WHO defined infodemic as an overabundance of both online, and offline information, that spreads alongside an epidemic.
According to WHO, Infodemic can also be deliberate. To gain interest out of something, some rogue actors might manipulate information and facts or spread biased propaganda that may end up being a part of this problem. See my list of Buzzwords, link below. WHO, therefore, asked its member states to disseminate accurate information in a timely manner as a prevention method of infodemic while respecting the freedom of expression.
A case study of Infodemic
Apart from diseases, Infodemic can be related to nearly any subjet. When the need for authentic information faces obstacles and that eventually leads to a different problem, that is infodemic. Here is an example of how excessive and easy-to-access information can change a very plain truth into something unreal yet believed by many.
This instance is about the chupacabra, a blood-sucking legendary beast that first emerged in Puerto Rico in the late 1990s. Chupacabras were bipedal creatures with large eyes, spikes, and claws. Legends and rumors claimed that chupacabras used to suck the blood out of domestic animals.
Benjamin Redford carried out a mission to figure out what chupacabras actually were. In his five-year-long investigation, he proved that the tale of chupacabra was just a myth and the creatures that were thought to be chupacabras were actually sickened dogs and dog-like animals. They were suffering from sarcoptic mange, and their physical shape became distorted, which gave them a beast-like appearance.
Nonetheless, after all that evidence out there, the legend of chupacabras went viral. It even reached to the farthest part of the world. People believed in chupacabras. What was the reason for chupacabras legend going viral, despite having solid proof, can be associated with the problem of infodemic.
People started to know more than enough, too much information about chupacabras. They missed out the most important part, that the chupacabras were just regular but distorted beings. And the reason behind this disinformation was the Internet. Because that was the time of the Internet grew at a remarkable rate, same as the period of SARS outbreak, people misused and took advantage of it.
Redford himself regarded chupacabras as the first internet monsters. Too much-unbalanced information just created and spread out a whole new legendary beast, that was proved to be never existing.
The cure for the Infodemic
We don't have it yet. But, you can play a part to help get rid of it. The first step to fight against this problem is to acknowledge it. This relatively less discussed issue can make the suffering of the current pandemic worse. When someone needs guidance in a critical time like this, they need to be fed with authentic information; otherwise, it can be hard for people to get their things right.
Social media platforms have been the most effective carriers of rumors and fake news. It's because, on these platforms, anyone can say, write, share anything they want. This shared diversity of information creates confusion instead of knowledge. One needs to act sincerely while sharing any sort of information with others, just like the steps that need to be taken to prevent fake news.
The problem with infodemic is it's hard to find out when and where it's happening. The rumors about covid-19 were so powerful last year that even famous publications like The Lancet published studies that had to be taken down later for doubtful sources of data. It seems infodemic is not going anywhere very soon.
In the end, it's you who need to take care of yourself. Make an effort to get the best information out of your sources. Search engines have some techniques and keywords that help extract reliable and exact data from the vast world of the Internet. Try to learn the most effective use of these search tools, do the best research on your query. Share less, judge much, that's how you survive an infodemic.
Additional information
Reliable news sources used by Donald Harvey Marks
https://dhmarks.blogspot.com/2022/05/reliable-and-trusted-news-sources-used.html
Fake News: Everything You Need to Know
https://dhmarks.blogspot.com/2022/05/fake-news-everything-you-need-to-know.html
Best Online Free Fact-Checking Tools
https://dhmarks.blogspot.com/2022/05/best-online-free-fact-checking-tools.html
Fact-Checking: The Ways We Can Fight Fake News
https://dhmarks.blogspot.com/2022/05/fact-checking-ways-we-can-fight-fake.html
Infodemic: the epidemic of information (this article)
The Curious Case of Deepfakes
https://dhmarks.blogspot.com/2022/05/turmoil-that-swirls-beneath-curious.html
Elitists, Neocons and Neoliberals, oh my. My personal and ever-updating list.
https://dhmarks.blogspot.com/2022/05/elitists-neocons-neolibs-oh-my-httpbit.html
My personal list of Red Flags🚩, Dog Whistles🛷, Buzzwords, Hot Button⏺️ words and meaningless caricatures that will drive toxic algorithms to heat and twist 2022 2024 elections 🗳☑ and trigger hatred😡 on social media. Don't let lies manipulate your reasoned judgment. https://dhmarks.blogspot.com/2022/05/my-personal-list-of-red-flags-dog.html
Link to my Favorite Books📚 and recent reads, by Donald Harvey Marks, Physician⚕ and scientist🥼 https://bit.ly/3ok9UxI
The Curious Case of Deepfakes
Deepfakes are information, such as videos, that are not real, never happened in real life, yet that look real. Deepfakes are a severe emerging threat to our society, undermining the accepted concept that seeing is believing. Here is what you need to know.
personal blog https://bit.ly/3wB2PxW
Google docs http://bit.ly/3GZJdXh
How would you like to see Tom Cruise as Iron Man replacing Robert Downey Jr (RDJ)? Imagine the scene, Jarvis is taking orders from 'Ethan Hunt' instead of 'Sherlock Holmes.' If you are a fan of Mr. Cruise, you might like the idea very much. But you know the reality, you are bound to watch RDJ flying in his Iron suit. Even Doctor Strange might not be able to change this. Wait, hold on a minute, this all might be possible, in a way. Yes, you can enjoy Tom Cruise in a red iron shield blasting beams from his hands.
We actually have a better 'wizard' than Doc Strange to change this for you. This real-life 'wizard' is called deepfake technology. Actually, there are already videos on the internet that turn Tom Cruise into the richest Avenger. Just go check it out, but before that, let me present you with the curious case of deepfakes.
What is a deepfake?
In general, deepfakes are information, such as videos that are not real, never happened in real life, yet that look real. In the age of modern technology and artificial intelligence, reality can often be deceiving, confusing, disappointing. You might see things that you would never believe or expect to happen.
Deepfakes are just another relatively new addition to this world of being-fake, more like the latest generation photoshop products. Technically, deepfakes refer to the fake videos, audios, photos that are mischief works of artificial intelligence. The 'deep' part comes from Deep Learning, a branch of AI.
There is a growing branch of software to make deepfake contents. The most prominent and renowned example of deepfake technology is deceiving videos of celebrities, politicians speaking and doing things that they would never normally say or do. In this case, using deepfake technologies, faces can be swapped with different persons, the voices are doctored in a technical way that are as similar to the real ones.
How are they made?
Deepfakes can be a serious and complicated process, but an amateur tech-geek is not enabled, empowered to produce deepfake contents. And the process is becoming more widely available, automated, and convincing. Most of the deepfakes rely on generative adversarial networks, also known as GAN.
GAN create two machine learning models that work on generating fake images and videos based on the real person's authentic data. By encoding and decoding those data, the AI algorithms render the final result.
The dilemma of deepfakes
The aforementioned example of Tom Cruise being Tony Stark brings no harm to our society. It's just an excellent way to get entertained by virtue of modern technology. But there is the other side of the coin too.
Just imagine, while stumbling upon social media, you get to see the newly-elect US president Joe Biden discussing imposing a new ban on US visas to all kind of Middle East citizens. Well, if you are a person of political intellect, you might not want to believe this video at first glance, think about cross-checking, but there are many people, a lot of audiences out there who would take the video for granted without thinking further.
Or, another video pops-up on your social feed in which Greta Thunberg praises a famous consumer brand that has a lot to do with world carbon emission. You might feel like 'Et tu, Greta?'
While the contents of these videos may have nothing to do with reality, these can wreak havoc in mass-society. People would go wild; things would be unstable. One US senator considered deepfakes as the modern equivalent of nuclear weapons.
In the old days, he said some actor would need heavy military power to threaten the United States, but now, with the help of deepfakes, one could throw the country into tremendous crisis. It is debatable if deepfakes are really equivalent to nuclear weapons, but it's a big deal when it comes to the individual threat.
For instance, making pornographic contents of celebrities, as well as ordinary people, is another threatening possibility of deepfakes. There are examples of swapping body parts such as heads of celebrities with porn-stars. In 2017, according to the Guardian, some Reddit users created porn-clips of Gal Gadot, Taylor Swift and Scarlett Johansson with the help of deepfake technologies. One only needs to briefly consider the vast potential harm to ones reputation, interpersonal relationships, professional position, the loss in potential value of ones artistic or financial worth, to realize the possible harms that can ensue.
The US election and deepfakes
Deepfakes were considered to be a devastating artifact of the US election in 2020. Now that people have seen how fake news (i.e. falsehoods presented in the guise of truth or parody, as in The Onion magazine) and cyberwars can interfere with the system in the previous election, deepfakes were thought to have a devastating effect on the 2020 US election. See my links at end of this article to describe identifying and fighting fake news. But fortunately, this has not turned into serious threats. Of course, there were deepfake videos around, but they were not influential enough to be noticed. Yet, the whole election 2020 went dramatic and confrontational, thanks to, in some cases, Donald Trump and his loyal followers. This could be an understandable reason that deepfakes were an undesirable factor in out society, law, electoral system, politics etc.
How to spot one?
You can spot deepfake content if you look at it with a skeptical eye. Most of the deepfakes that arise on the internet are works of non-professional people. Deepfake videos are generally posted in low resolutions to hide the glitches inside them.
Most often, the lipsynching doesn't sync precisely. The edge of the face can be seen breaking down from time to time. The eyes might not blink, although the latest products may not have this glitch . And if you look at the mouth movement while the character is talking, you might notice abnormal movements of the jaws.
Of course, the more professional deepfakes are hard to spot. These might need digital forensic or much more difficult technological processing. Fortunately, there are government agencies, universities and tech firms that are working on detecting deepfakes.
But as an audience, you must be careful and somewhat skeptical about everything on the internet. Think twice, don't take for certain the authenticity of everything you see because the “seeing is believing” motto doesn't work in our time. Watch for what you share or what your friends do. Go for the roots, the origin of the contents. The world of the internet is not as innocent as you might think it is. As attributed to Mark Twain, “it is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
The future of deepfakes
AI technology is booming, as are various deepfake technologies. There seems to be no possibility that it's going away anytime soon. Deepfakes can be used for good deeds, like making films, fun and entertaining video contents. Deepfakes even help people get back their voice lost to diseases.
Unfortunately, there are several ways to cause severe damage by deepfakes. With the advancement of AI, deepfakes will be much more accurate. But these AI advances should increase the opportunity to battle against deepfakes too. AIs are already being used to detect deepfakes, and with time, deepfake Dr Jeckle will be more vital of a tool to fight back its own Mr Hyde. One promising way to combat deepfakes is the trend for all video uploaded onto the net to have embedded blockchain identification, to validate the original material (Combating Deepfake Videos Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore,
"Blockchain can help combat threat of deepfakes. Here's how | World Economic Forum" https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/how-blockchain-can-help-combat-threat-of-deepfakes/ )
Additional Reading
Additional information by DH Marks
Reliable news sources used by Donald Harvey Marks http://bit.ly/3kECPvr
Fake News: Everything You Need to Know, by Donald Harvey Marks http://bit.ly/345cj95
Best Online Free Fact-Checking Tools, by Donald Harvey Marks http://bit.ly/3H97I44
@birdwatch
Fact-Checking: The Ways We Can Fight Fake News, by Donald Harvey Marks http://bit.ly/3qudEyX
Infodemic: the epidemic of information, by Donald Harvey Marks http://bit.ly/3fV7BgN
The Curious Case of Deepfakes (this article) http://bit.ly/3GZJdXh
My (DHM) Favorite and Recent book📚 reads https://bit.ly/3ok9UxI
AI threatens 2024 election integrity as text-to-image generators spread misinformation
AI threatens 2024 election integrity as text-to-image generators spread misinformation
You can message me on Telegram and WhatsApp.
A wider range of my writings are available on my (DHM) blog site www.dhmarks.blogspot.com
