Check a claim before you share it
Reference
Twelve patterns worth being able to name. Naming one while you are looking at it is most of the work, because these techniques rely on being processed as content rather than as technique.
Media bias
Two accurate headlines about one event can leave opposite impressions, because a headline has to choose what leads. Watch which side's reaction is quoted first, whether money is called a cost or an investment, and which actor is given agency in the sentence.
Statistics
A percentage change with no raw numbers behind it can describe almost anything. Three incidents rising to twelve is a 300 percent increase. So is three thousand rising to twelve thousand. If the raw counts are not given, assume there is a reason.
Decontextualization
A genuine photograph from another place or another year, relabelled. Nothing about the image is fake, which is why looking harder at it never helps. Reverse image search is the only reliable counter.
Propaganda
Content engineered to produce outrage, fear or vindication before it produces a thought. Not proof of falsehood, but a reliable signal that the content was optimized to spread rather than to inform.
Propaganda
Presenting a fringe position and a well-established one as two equal sides, so the audience concludes the matter is unsettled. The technique does not require lying about either side. It works purely through the layout.
Social media
Feeds rank by predicted engagement, and outrage engages. The most divisive version of any story travels furthest without anyone deciding it should. What you see is not a sample of what is being said.
Conspiracy theories
An accusation delivered as a question, so there is no claim to check and no responsibility for it. The counter is to convert it into a testable statement: what exactly is being asserted, and what would show it to be wrong?
Conspiracy theories
A claim built so that contradicting evidence becomes proof of the cover-up. Once absence of evidence counts as evidence, no observation can change the conclusion, which means the belief is no longer about the world.
Disinformation
An image of text purporting to be a post, message or headline. It takes under a minute to make, cannot be verified from the image, and is shared at enormous scale. Always look for the original.
AI-generated content
AI-generated images, audio and video, now past the point where visual inspection is dependable. Detection tools produce false positives. Provenance, meaning who published it first and who stands behind it, is what still works.
Social engineering
A message that manufactures a deadline so you act before you check: your account will be closed, the payment failed, respond now. Identical in structure to viral misinformation, and countered the same way, by leaving and reaching the source yourself.
Disinformation
Coordinated activity dressed as spontaneous public opinion. Many accounts saying the same thing in the same window feels like consensus and is designed to. Account age and posting history usually give it away.