How Can We Fact-Check?

written by 20224 Jun Min Ah

What is Fake News? 

Fake news is false information that looks like real news from the legit press. These days, fake news makes people confused. For real, fake news is developing. This development makes it harder to distinguish the truth information from false information. 

Also, the technology for developing fake news is called deep fake. A deep fake is when some people manipulate a video, which can be a huge issue. They can change the appearance of a person or put something in there. A deep fake is more challenging to be recognized as a fake than a fake picture. 

Fact-Checking is a way to distinguish true and false in the media.

Why Do We Need Fact-Checking?

Some people, who can make Deep Fake News, can quickly produce a big fake issue. Then they can spread fast with social media. For example, a few years ago, there was fake news about fans.  

People thought that when we use a fan with the door closed in a room; we will die. It spread between a lot of people, and until now, quite many people believe the issue. However, it was not the truth. There’s no connection between using a fan in a sealed room and the death of a human. 

Furthermore, recently, over 800 people around the world died because of fake news. People heard and read that a high concentration of alcohol is useful in preventing coronavirus. 

With these cases, we can know how influential fake news is, and it is hazardous to people, especially the disadvantaged class of information. Therefore, we have to look for most of the information and do fact-checking.

How Can We Fact-Check?

We can use credible internet websites. For example, we can access the official website of a government or a press. We can also access educational websites that end in .edu or organizational websites that end in .org. 

We can read a variety of books about the topics. There are lots of specialized books for various areas such as science, art, history, etc.

We can ask something that we wonder about to the experts or related people. For example, we can write an email to a corporation to find out the truth.