Fake News : Unveiled

19/04/2020

Best site for Fact checking of Indian Fake news
https://www.altnews.in/

Old map of India shared to praise PM Modi on tackling coronavirusArchit Mehta17th April 2020A map of India which compares Indian states with various countries on the basis of population has gone viral. Ram Madhav, national general secretary...

19/04/2020

Methodology for fact checking
1. Selecting a claim to debunk
Alt News continuously monitors social media and mainstream media for incorrect and/or dubious information. Our sources for topics include:

Speeches and tweets of politicians and officials in positions of authority
Claims made by political parties and their leaders via their social media pages.
Provocative hashtags promoted by media to influence public opinion in favour of a political party or leader.
Social media suspect list. For social media, we have compiled a comprehensive list of pages, groups, accounts and websites which we routinely check for false information. We monitor them closely on a real-time basis.
Messages from social media users on Facebook and Twitter bringing claims to our attention for fact-checking.
Given the volume of fake claims that are circulating on any given day, Alt News makes a selection of which ones to debunk. The following parameters are considered for selection of topics we write on:

How viral is the claim (extent, reach and spread)
Source of the claim (who shared it? A prominent politician? A verified account?)
Nature of the claim (Is it provocative? Can it lead to violence or physical harm to individuals?)
2. Researching the claim
Once a suspicious claim has been selected for a fact check, Alt News engages in systematic research to verify it. To debunk any fake claim, Alt News may use one or more of the below methodologies:

Using internet tools like Google Reverse Image search to determine the origin of viral photographs or videos and also to verify if the same image or video has been used earlier in similar or different contexts. In order to use Google Reverse Image search for videos, we break the video into individual frames and also use publicly available tools such as InVid for the same.
Internet search using various Search filters (date, time etc.) to arrive at the origin of posts and messages circulating on the internet.
Establishing contact with the local authorities or police in case of viral rumours, particularly the communally sensitive ones to verify the truth behind them.
Reviewing original video or transcript to verify if the statements attributed to public figures have been clipped to distort the message.
Referring to primary data or official data source/s to verify exaggerated claims about achievements.
Contacting the person to whom a seemingly fake claim is attributed.
Consulting reputed subject matter experts where necessary.
3. Evaluating the claim
Using a variety of tools and methods described above, Alt News evaluates the veracity of a claim and arrives at a conclusion. Where relevant, more than one tool is used to conclusively debunk the fake claim.

4. Writing the fact-check
Once the claim has been selected, researched and evaluated, Alt News puts out the information in public domain through articles that are detailed yet reader friendly. We strive to establish the context in which the particular claim was made, focus on simplicity of language, and provide links that debunk the claim so that readers can verify the information for themselves. If the information is inadequate or out of bounds, we refrain from passing conclusive judgement.

5. Updating the articles
Information is often dynamic, as a result of which stories have to be constantly updated. Alt News keeps an eye out for relevant news and updates its articles so as to provide readers with the latest and the most accurate information. In the event of an error on our part, we are prompt in acknowledging and correcting it.

19/04/2020

https://www.snopes.com/search/

Snopes.com is the internet's definitive fact-checking site, widely regarded by journalists, folklorists, and readers as an invaluable research companion.

19/04/2020

Fake news has become an important topic of research in a variety of disciplines including linguistics and computer science. In this paper, we explain how the problem is approached from the perspective of natural language processing, with the goal of building a system to automatically detect misinformation in news. The main challenge in this line of research is collecting quality data, i.e., instances of fake and real news articles on a balanced distribution of topics. We review available datasets and introduce the MisInfoText repository as a contribution of our lab to the community. We make available the full text of the news articles, together with veracity labels previously assigned based on manual assessment of the articles’ truth content. We also perform a topic modelling experiment to elaborate on the gaps and sources of imbalance in currently available datasets to guide future efforts. We appeal to the community to collect more data and to make it available for research purposes.

19/04/2020

India's premier Digital Fact Check Website on Fake news. When There Is a Claim, We Will Fact Check the fake news from India and around the World. Page 1
https://www.boomlive.in/fake-news

India's premier Digital Fact Check Website on Fake news. When There Is a Claim, We Will Fact Check the fake news from India and around the World. Page 1

14/04/2020

Google is the biggest search engine and they have a huge database of the web. This makes them the best Image Detective to check for original image when performing a reverse search. As shown in the video above, just drag and drop the image, they will provide a list of sites hosting the same image. Google Reverse Search feature is not the only reverse image search engine in the market, there are a few alternatives image look up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5e9wTdAulA&feature=emb_title

A quick demo of how Google's reverse image search tool can be used to fact check and research images. Have you ever wondered about the source or history behi...

10/04/2020

Tips to help prevent the spread of rumors and fake news:
1. Understand when a message is forwarded
2. Check photos and media carefully
3. Look out for messages that look different
4. Check your biases
5. Fake news often goes viral
6. Verify with other sources