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Real vs. Fake News: How To Avoid Lies, Hoaxes, and Clickbait and Find the Truth: Avoiding Fake News

This guide provides information about inaccurate, misleading, and satirical “news” sites, as well as links to reliable sources of news, and tools for evaluating the information you find online.

Learn to Recognize Common Features of Fake News

With practice, you can learn to recognize features of fake news articles such as: strange URLs; authors with a history of writing fake or misleading news; provocative or inflammatory headlines; article content that doesn't reflect the headline; outdated information being presented as current information; lack of verifiable sources; poor grammar; and pictures or quotes that are untraceable. Use the tips in the video and articles below to help you practice looking for these things. See the "Evaluating Sources" page of this guide for more tips.

Learn Which "News" Sites Are Fake or Biased

Several scholars and journalists have compiled lists of fake news sites. Here are some of the best:

  • False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical "News" Sources A comprehensive list of unreliable "news" sources, created by Professor Melissa Zimdars. See Zimdars's original document for "Tips For Analyzing News Sources," and read the Chronicle of Higher Education interview with her for more information about the project, and the response to it.
  • Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC News) "Dedicated to educating the public on media bias and deceptive news practice," MBFC categorizes dozens of news sources based on their bias. The website also includes lists of reliable sources of scientific information, unreliable pseudoscience sources, and satirical sources.

Learn to Evaluate All Sources

See the Evaluating Sources tab for more evaluation strategies.

Infographic from IFLA on How To Spot Fake News: Consider the Source (Click away from the story to investigate the site, its mission and its contact info). Read Beyond (Headlines can be outrageous in an effort to get clicks. What's the whole story?). Check the Author (Do a quick search on the author. Are they credible? Are they real?). Supporting Sources? (Click on those links. Determine if the info given actually supports the story.). Check the Date (Reposting old news stories doesn't mean they're relevant to current events.). Is It a Joke? (If it's too outlandish, it might be satire. Research the site and author to be sure.). Check Your Biases (Consider if your own beliefs could affect your judgement.). Ask the Experts (Ask a librarian, or consult a fact-checking site.).

Learn How to Identify and Debunk Fake News

The following video tutorial covers how to identify and analyze different types of misinformation, and provides some strategies for evaluating news sources and finding more reliable information on the internet (from off campus you will need to log in using your Pipeline username and password):