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How to notice and to protect yourself against fake news:

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1.Vet the Publisher’s Credibility:

Make sure the information is coming from a credible source. Be wary of unusual top-level domain names, like “.com.co.” Ask yourself has the author or publisher published anything else that you could check to be authentic?

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2.Check the Sources and Citations:

 If you notice a glaring lack of quotes and contributing sources, particularly on a complex issue, then something is amiss. Credible journalism is fed by fact-gathering, so a lack of research likely means a lack of fact-based information. Also, if the information is on other sites it is said to be more reliable and realistic.

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3.Ask the Pros:

There are many good fact checking websites, like FactCheck.org, International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), PolitiFact.com, or Snopes.com. Do your own detective work and feel more confident in being able to identify fact vs. fiction.

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Solutions:

There are also solutions to protect oneself against fake news in the first place. We should revert back to reliable sources such as articles and broadsheet newspapers. Newspapers remain an important and powerful brand, and they should be the solution for fake news. Let’s not forget that before social media and algorithms dictated to us what was considered news, newspapers were our source of information.

There is also a proposed solution to the issue concerned with fake news which includes the use of a tool that can identify and remove fake sites from the results provided to a user by a search engine or a social media news feed. The tool can be downloaded by the user and, subsequently, be appended to the browser or application used to receive news feeds. I believe something like this tool must be created in the near future to stop fake news from getting out of hand.

References;

• Aldwairi, M. & Alwahedi, A. 2018, "Detecting Fake News in Social Media Networks", Procedia Computer Science, vol. 141, pp. 215-222.

• Yang, N. 2017, The solution to fake news, Duncan McIntosh Company, Inc, New York.

• Christina Nagler, “4 Tips for Spotting a Fake News Story”, <https://www.summer.harvard.edu/inside-summer/4-tips-spotting-fake-news-story>