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Evaluating Information

A guide outlining false information, how it spreads across various platforms, and tips on recognition and assessment.

References

American Psychological Association. (2022). Spurious correlationhttps://dictionary.apa.org/spurious-correlation.

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Bear, B. (2016, December 7). 10 Cognitive biases explain why we fall for fake news. Medium. https://medium.com/@BenWBear/10-cognitive-biases-explain-why-we-fall-for-fake-news-c5c489995c73.

Beauchamp, Z. (2018, October 15). The controversy around hoax studies in critical theory, explained. Voxhttps://www.vox.com/2018/10/15/17951492/grievance-studies-sokal-squared-hoax.

Bergstrom, C., & West, J. (2017). Misleading axes on graphshttps://www.callingbullshit.org/tools/tools_misleading_axes.html.

Blakesee, S. (2004). The CRAAP test. https://library.csuchico.edu/help/source-or-information-good.

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Brown, S. (2020, October 5). MIT Sloan research about social media, misinformation, and electionshttps://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/mit-sloan-research-about-social-media-misinformation-and-elections.

Calzon, B. (2021). Misleading statistics examples: Discover the potential for misuse of statistics & data in the digital age. The Datapine Blog. https://www.datapine.com/blog/misleading-statistics-and-data.

Carey, K. (2016, December 29). A peek inside the strange world of fake academia. The New York Timeshttps://www.proquest.com/blogs-podcasts-websites/peek-inside-strange-world-fake-academia/docview/1855479111/se-2?accountid=10610.

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Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS). (2021). Why we fall for fake news. UC Santa Barbara. https://www.cits.ucsb.edu/fake-news/why-we-fall.

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Dizikes, P. (2019, September 4). How "information gerrymandering" influences voters. MIT Newshttps://news.mit.edu/2019/information-gerrymandering-influences-voters-0904.

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Menczer, F., & Hills, T. (2020, December 1). Information overload helps fake news spread, and social media knows it. Scientific Americanhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/.

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Meserole, C. (2018, May 9). How misinformation spreads on social media- And what to do about it. The Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/05/09/how-misinformation-spreads-on-social-media-and-what-to-do-about-it/.

Morland, S. (2022, July 14). Half of Holocaust-related posts on Telegram deny or distort facts, U.N. says. Reutershttps://www.reuters.com/world/half-holocaust-related-posts-telegram-deny-or-distort-facts-un-says-2022-07-14/.

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Pennycook, G., Bear, A., Collins, E., & Rand, D.G. (2017). The implied truth effect: Attaching warnings to a subset of fake news headlines increases perceived accuracy of headlines without warnings. Management Science. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3035384.

Pennycook, G., & Rand, D.G. (2019). Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning. Cognition, 188(1), 39-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011.

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Radom, R. (2017, January 04). Evaluating Information Sources Using the 5 Ws. OER Commons. https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/19364-evaluating-information-sources-using-the-5-ws.

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Wardle, C. (2020, September 22). Understanding information disorderhttps://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/understanding-information-disorder/.

Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2017). Lateral reading: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Stanford History Education Group. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3048994.