Unfortunately, you can’t always trust everything that you see online or hear on the news. Because in many cases, people can benefit from you believing and taking action on certain things, regardless of whether those things are true or not. So to help ensure that you’re not taken advantage of in this way, it’s important that you learn how to spot disinformation and teach those you care about to spot these things too. This way, your elderly loved ones won’t wind up spending their rent for their senior living community on causes that they shouldn’t or propagating ideas that aren’t factual.
To help you with this goal, here are three tips for helping someone spot misleading news stories.
Look For The Sources Of Information
When you read something posted online, one of the first things that you can do to see if it’s trustworthy information is to check out what the sources of the information are.
In most cases, if the sources of the information are very apparent and are from people or organizations that you know are trustworthy, that information has a greater chance of being trustworthy. But if the claims that you’re seeing are being made by people you don’t know and can’t confirm are trustworthy, you may want to think twice about believing the information that’s being presented to you.
Learn To Spot Bias
Bias is another thing that you should keep an eye out for if you’re wanting to spot information that may not be accurate or fair.
In most cases, people show their bias when they allow their own beliefs to affect their judgment of people or things. They then aren’t able to look at the whole picture and encourage others to do the same. So if you feel like something you’re reading is being oversimplified or isn’t taking everything into consideration, there could be bias that’s causing this. And when someone is biased, their take on a topic can’t necessarily be trusted and could be misleading.
Do You Trust Who’s Sharing The Information?
Aside from who created this content in the first place, you should also ask yourself if the people that you’re getting this information from or who are sharing it with others are people that you trust to be truthful and well-informed about the topic of discussion.
Some people tend to be more prone to believing things at face value. So when these people share sensationalized information, you may want to begin taking what they’re sharing with a grain of salt until you’re able to corroborate what’s being claimed.
If you want to be able to spot misleading news stories and help others to do the same, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you develop this skill.
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