Most students can’t tell fake news from real news, study shows

Posted Nov 22, 2016 by Jordan Crook (@jordanrcrook)

Most students can’t tell fake news from real news, study shows

A Stanford study found that the majority of middle school students can’t tell the difference between real news and fake news. In fact, 82 percent couldn’t distinguish between a real news story on a website and a “sponsored content” post.

The WSJ: Of the 8,704 students studied (ranging in age from middle school to college level), four in ten high-school students believed that the region near Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant was toxic after seeing an unsourced photo of deformed daisies coupled with a headline about the Japanese area. The photo, keep in mind, had no source or location attribution. Meanwhile, two out of every three middle-schoolers were fooled by an article on financial preparedness penned by a bank executive.

But with 62 percent of U.S. adults getting the majority of their news from social media, the responsibility for this issue also lies with the social media organizations themselves, such as Facebook and Twitter. Both Google and Facebook have made steps toward thwarting the fake news onslaught, including banning fake news organizations from their ad network.

Even in minuscule amounts, fake news has a much greater ability to spread quickly and be consumed by many given the nature of the salacious headlines themselves.

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more on fake news in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=fake+news