For this weeks assignement I spent some time with the website RumorGuard from News Literacy Project.
I found the website to be VERY well put together, clean, and extremely user friendly. The front page shows some of the latest checks of mis and disinformation and the rating or score it’s received.
I liked that when you cliked on The Factors tab, it states, “Learn about five factors you should consider when evaluating the credibility of a claim. Then use the techniques associated with each factor to apply your knowledge!” The five factors being: Authenticty, Source, Evidence, Context, and Reasoning. All valid items one should consider when evaluating a post, comment or news item that you see on social media or websites today. Some of the questions they posit are, Is the piece authentic? Has it been posted by a known or credible source? And is there evidence the proves the claim?
I really liked the Topics tab as well, as you could see trending news items and click on them. You’ll then be shown all of the relatable stories to that topic and the if the claim is found to be true or not. I liked that you can simply see the truth or non-truth statement on the image and move on, or you can click it and do a bit more of a deeper dive on it to see the reasoning on why they concluded one way or the other. I like the “Quick Look” and “The Takeaway” box that gets very concise in a very comprehensive way.
I think this site would be a VERY useful tool for eradicating misinformation, especially this year in what is likely the most consequential election year of our lives, and one that’s loaded with misinformation all over the place online and on apps. It would behoove everyone to bookmark this site. I’d love to see it being promoted to Gen-Z on Tik Tok and Instagram, as I think the vibe of it is definitely more youthful, even though older generations would also get intot it as well. It’s definitely the best tool that I’ve seen that helps to counter misinformation.
For evaluation, I also played with the game called Bad News. I liked the retro feel to it, of old computer games from the 90’s. The game, after you start playing, states: “My job is to guide you in your quest to becoming a disinformation and fake news tycoon.” The area I focused on was Impersonation, where through a series of questions the game had me become a “master impersonator” in order to better fool people with online posts, if I were to do that, which I am not. But it let you know the ways and techniques online users can utilize to fool and ensnare you in a trap, thinking one thing is something that it is not.
I feel like we have seen so much of this information online, especially now with the advent of the AI space. Fake images impersonating celebrites and people viewing them and thinking that they are real. This is going to beceom a very real and pressing issue to soceity as the technology just gets better and better. One concern is the upcoming election. I recall a recent story I saw on NBC a few weeks ago, which was about New Hampshire Democrats being robo-called with a fake impersonation of President Biden urging them not to vote in the state primary. I just found an article about it here as well from the New York Times. We need to stay on guard from those who wish to fool us and vetting and using Rumorguard as well as devices like the game above from Bad News can help steer us to the proper and correct information. We must stay vigilent in these unprecedented times!
