With the advent of social media and the wider access to the internet in Nigeria and other countries of the world, news is no longer what it is. Things have changed from the past when we depended on the traditional media for informative, educative and entertaining content. This is because the World Wide Web is free and anyone can post or share anything, including fake news, all in the name of driving traffic to their website. Consequently, whatever content you read on blogs or social media should not be taken at face value. A very recent example is the fake news that President Muhammadu Buhari was dead. Jumia Travel shares five ways to identify fake news.
- Check the URL
There are some news websites you can never doubt their credibility. However, to spread fake news, the fake news peddlers usually clone reliable websites. For instance, the authentic website for Vanguard is wwwvanguardngr.com, but there are fake www.vanguardngr.local-report.com and www.vanguardnigeria.org.
- Use other sources to verify
When you are unsure of the trustworthiness of any news on a particular website, you should use other sources to confirm. Oftentimes, breaking news will be reported by leading news platforms. If this is not the case, you should tarry a while before reporting or you should just ignore it.
- Verify with fact-checking websites
As fake news becomes a reality we cannot overlook, there are now websites where you can verify any news like factcheck.org.
- The date
Some individuals just want to be mischievous. They share backdated news that may not be presently relevant. So, you may think the news is true. Hence, you may want to check the date before believing such a story.
- The story is too flamboyant
The news story may be too terrifying, humorous, flamboyant, sympathetic and frustrating. If it features these metrics, you should verify the news from other sources and if you don’t find it from others, it may be fake news.
