What is Fake? What is Genuine? What is Satire?

When you are surfing the web or social media please consider these questions: 
  • Who made this?
  • Who is the target audience?
  • Who paid for this? Or, who gets paid if you click on this?
  • Who might benefit or be harmed by this message?
  • What is left out of this message that might be important?
  • Is this credible (and what makes you think that)?
(Thanks to Project Look Sharp for these questions.)

 learn tricks to spot fake news. Here are a few things to watch for:
  • Look for unusual URLs or site names, including those that end with ".co" -- these are often trying to appear like legitimate news sites, but they aren't.
  • Look for signs of low quality, such as words in all caps, headlines with glaring grammatical errors, bold claims with no sources, and sensationalist images (women in bikinis are popular clickbait on fake news sites). These are clues that you should be skeptical of the source.
  • Check a site's "About Us" section. Find out who supports the site or who is associated with it. If this information doesn't exist -- and if the site requires that you register before you can learn anything about its backers -- you have to wonder why they aren't being transparent.
  • Check Snopes, Wikipedia, and Google before trusting or sharing news that seems too good (or bad) to be true.
  • Consider whether other credible, mainstream news outlets are reporting the same news. If they're not, it doesn't mean it's not true, but it does mean you should dig deeper.
  • Check your emotions. Clickbait and fake news strive for extreme reactions. If the news you're reading makes you really angry or super smug, it could be a sign that you're being played. Check multiple sources before trusting.
(Thanks to Professor Melissa Zimdars of Merrimack College for some of these tips.)

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/how-to-spot-fake-news-and-teach-kids-to-be-media-savvy

5 ways to spot fake news

These days it can be hard to tell what news is legit, what's opinion, and what's full-on fake. These five tips can help you weed out the real from the completely made up.

FBI SOS Gov

​The new SOS program, created for students in third through eighth grades, covers age-appropriate topics, such as cyberbullying, passwords, malware, social media, and more