Fake vs Real

Social media is huge. You can find news about anything you want to know about. People share news all the time with each other, but that doesn’t mean it is real. Real content is what actually happened, while fake content is what people made up. Fake content could be about anything such as fake disasters, fake stories about celebrates, or even click baits to lead you to a virus.  There are a lot of people out there that like to create fake content just for personal enjoyment. People that create these things are often referred to as “trolls” around the internet.

Fake content can affect people in many different ways depending on what they are using it for. Some examples of how it can affect people would be, students using it as a source for information, people sending money to help fund fake research, and tricking people into thinking someone is a criminal. Fake sites can try and take your money, take any information they can get from you, or just get personal gain from your visit to the site. These sites can appear to be very real and hard to tell the difference between fake and real.

There are a few different ways to find out if what you are reading is actually fake or real content. The Learning Network, a blog created by the New York Times to help teach people about stuff around the world has given tips on how to tell if the source is really reliable. They like to use that acronym IMVAIN which stands for.

“Independent sources are preferable to self-interested sources.

Multiple sources are preferable to a report based on a single source.

Sources who Verify or provide verifiable information are preferable to those who merely assert.

Authoritative and/or Informed sources are preferable to sources who are uninformed or lack authoritative background.

Named sources are better than anonymous ones.” (KATHERINE,2015)

If you follow these rules when looking at your news articles they should help you find if your source of information is really reliable. A few tips I can give you to stay secure on the internet would have to be to never give away your credit card information to a website before searching around about the site. Don’t give away any personal information to anyone unless 100% necessary. Lastly don’t fall for those ads where you can “win a free car” or something, it is more than likely a virus. If you can follow all these tips then you should be able to find out if what you are reading is real or fake.

KATHERINE,S(2015,October)  Skills and Strategies | Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources Retrieved from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/skills-and-strategies-fake-news-vs-real-news-determining-the-reliability-of-sources/