How to Find Factual Information on Social Media:

 

It’s more important now than ever to be able to determine which information online is factual and which is misinformation.

• Some social media influencers have the power to affect voter opinions more than unbiased news sources. On one hand social media enhances global communication and helps people become more informed about current and important news, however, the ease and increase that comes with posting on social media allows for content that sways voters to become more polarized.

Have you ever wondered if a persons’ story was actually true? There’s a simple set of steps to apply to almost every post:

• If it’s a friend’s story or repost, click on the original post to see where it came from 

• Once the original post is found, look for where the post got its fact, statistic, or general information from - such as a news source cited somewhere in the post. In this case, the original quote came from an NBC interview. That’s perfect, we can go google and look up this interview to make sure the facts match

• If there isn’t a news source cited, look up a quote on google to see where the original news report came from 

• Once we find the interview online, from looking up keywords from the original post such as “I’m not joking, NBC interview”, we can make sure the information matches. 

• Finally, it is important to make sure the information on one website matches other, non biased news reports. A good way to do this is to click around on some of the other top results websites and piecing the information together to make sure you get the full, accurate picture.

• Check out the example below!