LibGuides: Fake News & Media Bias: Web Resources

Web Resources

The following free online resources are relevant to fact checking and fake news.

Critical Research on Journalism

Columbia Journalism Review (Opens in New Tab) Analysis and reporting on contemporary journalism.

Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window Providing the most robust, quality research solution in areas related to communication and mass media. CMMC offers cover-to-cover ("core") indexing and abstracts for more than 650 journals, and selected ("priority") coverage of nearly 200 more, for a combined coverage of more than 850 titles. Furthermore, this database includes full text for over 500 journals. Many major journals have indexing, abstracts, PDFs and searchable cited references from their first issues to the present (dating as far back as 1915). CMMC contains a sophisticated Communication Thesaurus and comprehensive reference browsing (i.e., searchable cited references for peer-reviewed journals covered as "core").

Fact-Checking Research - Poynter (Opens in New Tab) Database of research articles maintained by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a leading school for journalism.
Journalist's Resource (Opens in New Tab) Collects scholarship relevant to media practitioners, bloggers, educators, students and general readers.
Pew Research Center - News Habits & Media (Opens in New Tab) An excellent source of statistical data on all aspects of news media. The Pew Research Center conducts research into the attitudes and habits of Americans across media from social media to newspapers, cable news to talk radio.
Public Perspectivev on Trust in News - Reuters & Oxford (Opens in New Tab) This report examines the reasons for the public's low trust of the media in the U. S. and eight European countries.
The Spread of True and False News Online - Science (Opens in New Tab) This study, published in the March 9, 2018 issue of Science, is the largest ever of its kind. Researchers at MIT analyzed roughly 126,000 stories spread on Twitter by 3 million people more than 4.5 million times and determined that false news spread "farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information."

AllSides

Unlike regular news services, AllSides exposes bias and provides multiple perspectives to promote "balanced news and civil discourse."

The AllSides Perspectives blog provides balanced coverage of today's top news and issues as well as unique views on media bias, filter bubbles, political polarization, and bridging divides — topics that are often ignored by the press.

AllSides for Schools features resources for teachers from single lessons to entire lesson plans.

AllSides (Opens in New Tab) We expose people to information and ideas from all sides of the political spectrum so they can better understand the world — and each other.
AllSides Perspectives Blog (Opens in New Tab) The AllSides Perspectives Blog features content by the AllSides team and guest writers across the political spectrum. We highlight multiple perspectives, including views that might be overlooked by the broader media. We often publish content about media bias, media literacy, filter bubbles, political polarization, and bridging divides.
AllSides for Schools (Opens in New Tab) Teachers in all 50 states use our balanced news, media bias resources, and dialogue platform to build the skills that students need to navigate a constantly changing, often divisive and toxic, online landscape.

Browser Extensions

There are many extensions that work with browsers or even single sites such as Facebook to reveal bias or alert users to fake news. The list below contains just a small sample of these tools. When choosing such an extension, be sure to research its own methods of categorizing sites as well as the background of its creators or sponsors.

B. S. Detector (Opens in New Tab) B.S. Detector searches all links on a given webpage for references to unreliable sources, checking against a manually compiled list of domains. It then provides visual warnings about the presence of questionable links or the browsing of questionable websites.
Open Mind (Opens in New Tab) Alerts users to fake news sites, provides links to more balanced alternatives, and even assesses the partisanship of users' own online reading habits.

Resources for Faculty

Center for News Literacy (Opens in New Tab) News Literacy is a curriculum developed at Stony Brook University in New York over the past decade. It is designed to help students develop critical thinking skills in order to judge the reliability and credibility of information, whether it comes via print, television or the Internet.
Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World (Opens in New Tab) This course is designed to make students "think critically about the data and models that constitute evidence in the social and natural sciences."
Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning (Opens in New Tab) Report of a study conducted by Stanford University that assessed the ability of thousands of students to interpret information online. Results and sample assessments are included.
News Literacy Project (Opens in New Tab) The News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan education nonprofit, is building a national movement to advance the practice of news literacy throughout American society, creating better informed, more engaged and more empowered individuals — and ultimately a stronger democracy.