Identify & Challenge Disinformation

Adapted and extended based on the definitions used by Melissa Zimdars' Open Sources project at Merrimack College [November 2016].

• Misinformation: False information that is spread regardless of an intent to mislead.
• Disinformation: False claims and information and conspiracy theories that are spread with the intent to mislead. Propaganda.
  • Here's a good explanation of the difference between misinformation and disinformation.
• Deepfakes and shallowfakes: Use of video software to create events that never happened or distort a person's statements for propaganda purposes or to discredit public figures for political or financial gain. 
• Satire: Sources that use humor, irony, exaggeration, ridicule, satire, and false information to comment on current events.
• State-sponsored False Information: Sources, particularly in repressive or authoritarian states, operating under government control that create and spread disinformation and propaganda.
• Junk Science: Sources that promote discredited conspiracy theories or scientifically false or unverifiable claims.
• Hate on the Internet: Sites that actively promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, white supremacy, and other forms of violence, bias, and exclusion.
• Fake News: Content from sources that entirely fabricate information, disseminate disinformation and deceptive content, or grossly distort actual news reports.
• Clickbait: Sources that use exaggerated, misleading, or questionable headlines, social media descriptions, and/or images to generate traffic on a website.
• Political: Sources that provide generally verifiable information but only when it supports certain points of view or political goals.
• Credible: Sources that circulate news and information in a manner consistent with core principles of ethical journalism. (Remember: even credible sources sometimes rely on clickbait-style headlines or occasionally make mistakes. No news organization is perfect, which is why a healthy news diet consists of multiple sources of information, especially sources that issue corrections on previous reporting).

Check your emotions

Pause and give yourself time to reflect on sources that play on your emotions.

"When you feel strong emotion — happiness, anger, pride, vindication — and that emotion pushes you to share a "fact" with others, STOP. Above all, it's these things that you must fact-check.

Why? Because you're already likely to check things you know are important to get right, and you’re predisposed to analyze things that put you an intellectual frame of mind. But things that make you angry or overjoyed, well… our record as humans are not good with these things."

Check out this useful book below entitled, Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers by Mike Caulfield. I especially like the Chapter 3: Building a Fact-Checking Habit by Checking Your Emotions.

• This guide is based on Mitchell, Victoria. "Fake News and Information Literacy." UO Libraries, 7 Apr. 2021, researchguides.uoregon.edu/fakenews,
• "Misinformation, Disinformation, and Propaganda" by Wendy Wilcox, Cornell University Library licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and 
• "Identify & Challenge Disinformation" by Kimberly Pendell, Portland State University Library licensed under  CC BY 4.0