“Fake news” has created a lot of buzz since the election. Facebook has announced its Journalism Project to flag disputed stories and promote news literacy. Meanwhile, some individuals and websites are now applying the term “fake news” more broadly. Where do we find real news? And what qualifies as being news literate? Stephanie Craft, a professor of journalism at Illinois, has wrestled with that issue for several studies, including some with teens. She spoke with News Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain.
Some of the concern about fake news seems odd given that we’ve always had it, with supermarket tabloids a prominent example. What’s different now?
Publications like The National Enquirer and Weekly World News are still going strong in the supermarket checkout line. What’s different about today’s fake news is that it lives in the digital realm, where it can be so cheaply created and so easily distributed. The fact that a lot of fake news is shared via social networks also means that people view those articles as coming from a friend, which typically lends a bit more credibility to them.
Fake news also has a long history as a form of disinformation or propaganda. Even as the fake news label gets applied to more and more things – honest errors in news coverage, any news someone disagrees with – we ought to keep in mind the ends that fake news might be serving beyond just making money for people running a few websites.
Is Facebook’s project a good one? Or does it raise concerns?
I think both Facebook and Google are right to step up and think about ways to curb the outsized influence fake news can have. The trick, though, is doing so in a way that doesn’t alienate users. If a lot of the things I want to share with friends or they want to share with me get flagged as dubious, will I be angry at Facebook for squelching my political views or making me feel stupid? I’m hoping to see the Facebook initiative, for example, go beyond flagging potentially fake news items to saying why an article might be fake – what about it raises questions? This could help people sharpen their news literacy skills.
Teens get much of their news “accidentally” through social media, according to your research, and other studies show many adults do as well. But you suggest that part of being news literate is being intentional in how we consume news. How so?
If you made a New Year’s resolution to eat more healthy food, you would probably start spending more time in the produce section of the grocery store and less time hanging out near the ice cream freezer. The same principle applies to intentional news consumption. News literacy is about understanding where to find the “healthy” news and, we hope, developing a taste for and habit of consuming that healthy stuff.
So what’s the healthy stuff? Studies show that many people simply don’t trust mainstream news, or don’t trust specific news sources. How should we judge the credibility of a given news story, even if we don’t like the source or content?
Good, quality journalism is built on a foundation of verification. So, what the literate news consumer should be looking for are indicators that a journalist has taken steps to verify information: Is the information in the story coming from named people who are knowledgeable and authoritative on the topic at hand? Are there publicly available documents referenced in the story? Does the story link to them? Does the claim made in the headline match what the story actually says?
Those questions are a good start, anyway. If you find yourself answering “no” to those, it’s time to seek out another news outlet. And it’s like the old saying goes: If it sounds too good to be true – and in the case of fake news, that can mean the story seems designed to push all your political buttons – then it probably is.
You also suggest that being news literate means understanding how journalism works. What, specifically, do we need to know?
Fake news is abundant because it’s cheap, easy and plays to people’s desires to have their own, sometimes worst, views confirmed. How can real news, which is resource-intensive, compete with that? The answer is it can’t – at least not on the fake news playing field. What I’m suggesting is that news literacy has to help people understand how the economics of news shape the information environment, not just what a fake news story looks like.
Understanding that ours is a predominantly commercial media system, which puts pressure on news to be entertaining, for example, or incentivizes the creation of click-bait fake news, means I am better equipped to evaluate the news I see. One of the potential dangers in addressing these structural issues – and, really, in heightening people’s awareness of all the forces that shape the news – is that people will become cynical and conclude that no information merits our trust. We want skepticism, not cynicism.
To contact Stephanie Craft, call 217-244-4608; email scraft@illinois.edu.
