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The following media literacy tip is from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Washington. Dedicated to empowering voters and defending democracy, the League works to expand public knowledge and understanding of media literacy and news education as both are key to developing healthy, civically engaged communities.

Is that true?
Find out with these fact-checking sources.

When you see information on social media or in your inbox, verify it before you trust it or share it.

Use these resources to check the facts:

Snopes, started in 1994, is the oldest and largest fact-checking site that provides original investigative reporting and evidence-based and contextualized analysis on rumors.

AP Fact Check debunks false and misleading claims with fact checkers from Associated Press, an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting.

RumorGuard entries are produced by the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit focused on developing and teaching news literacy.

PolitiFact is a nonpartisan fact-checking website that sorts out the truth in American politics. It’s published by The Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists, which also offers Find Facts Fast – a free seven-day text-message course designed to you separate fact from fiction online.

The following media literacy tip is from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Washington. Dedicated to empowering voters and defending democracy, the League works to expand public knowledge and understanding of media literacy and news education as both are key to developing healthy, civically engaged communities.

Identify Scapegoating, Stop the Spread of Faulty Information 

Faulty information poses a threat. As with a virus, the threat is not just to a single individual, but to many people.

Faulty reasoning can accelerate the spread of faulty information. We are all susceptible to manipulation by faulty reasoning when bad actors try to take advantage of the brain’s limited ability to discern fact from fiction in a fast-moving social media environment.  

To resist manipulation by faulty reasoning, it helps to be familiar with common tactics, like scapegoating.

Scapegoating involves blaming huge problems or even smaller ones on a specific group or a specific person when there is no evidence that either the group or person is to blame. 

Two examples of scapegoating: Blaming low voter turnout on a single group of people in a population or singling out one junior engineer for a project’s failure when the project is the work of a team.

Learning to spot instances of scapegoating can help you reduce the spread of faulty information. If there is no evidence to support a claim, you can dismiss the faulty reasoning and thereby stop the spread of faulty information.

The following media literacy tip is from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Washington. Dedicated to empowering voters and defending democracy, the League works to expand public knowledge and understanding of media literacy and news education as both are key to developing healthy, civically engaged communities.

Learn to recognize fearmongering and put on the brakes!

We all are susceptible to persuasion. Persuasion can be based on reliable or faulty information. Faulty information at the heart of persuasion can spread like a virus quickly reaching many recipients and posing a threat to the truth, institutions and democracies.

To recognize faulty information, and thus resist its manipulation, a person needs to be familiar with some common types, often found in online posts, everyday conversations and elsewhere.

Fallacies are types of faulty reasoning or misleading or unsound arguments. They sound compelling, but can lead to unsupported conclusions and misguided actions. Many types of fallacies exist, and they were first identified by the Greeks.

One common fallacy is “fearmongering.” Fearmongering uses language or images that evoke strong emotions, including intense sympathy, fear or outrage. For example: “What you’re about to see will horrify you” and “The judge issued a disgusting ruling today.”

Emotional language and fearmongering statements prepare you to feel strong emotions, thus increasing the chance that you will. And, when you feel strong emotions, you are more likely to act without examining the quality of the information.

Learning about fallacies, like fearmongering, can help you put the brakes on being a spreader of faulty reasoning and faulty information.

The following media literacy tip is from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Washington. Dedicated to empowering voters and defending democracy, the League works to expand public knowledge and understanding of media literacy and news education as both are key to developing healthy, civically engaged communities.

Making sense of information

When a group of people creates a shared understanding of a complex or ambiguous situation in order to make decisions and take action, we call that collective sensemaking.

Today, our collective sensemaking is disrupted because of a number of factors, including facts and frames that can be faulty, either intentionally or through misinterpretation.

Here are a few quick definitions that put this into perspective.

• Facts: Data points that provide evidence about the world and what happens within it. (Can be faulty.)
• Frames: Mental structures that help us organize, interpret and make sense of those facts. (Can also be faulty.)
• Interpretation: The facts we have on hand help determine which frames we use. The frames we use often can help us connect those facts and give them meaning.

Learn more about these terms and definitions from this research article from the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public: https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/12/06/rumors-collective-sensemaking-kate-starbird/