Do you know how to spot fake news?

Last evening, just as we sisters were getting ready to turn out the lights, I heard Sister Kelly’s muffled voice through my closed door: “Pope Francis is dead.”

Jumping up, I joined her in the hallway, and we looked together at the social media post on her phone screen. “I think this is fake,” she said. I agreed with her. But how did we know?

Can you quickly spot disinformation or misinformation on your own social media feed?

Here are some tips.

1. Check the source. We looked at the name of the source feed and attempted to click on it. In this case, we were unable to do so because it was a photo of a Facebook post and not the actual post. That was suspicious in itself.
2. Inspect the image. The image included what appeared to be the logo of the official Vatican News site, but it was blurry. Also suspicious.
3. Visit the site. When I was unable to click through to the source feed, I used Facebook’s search feature to type the name of the supposed source, and checked the about information, which had this cryptic description: “Catholic Diary & Official Directory.”  There was nothing official about the site. A red flag.
4. Look at the time stamp. In this case, it said it was posted 8 hours earlier, about 2 p.m. our time. I knew that Pope Francis was still living at 2 p.m. because I’d been regularly seeking updated information about his status throughout the day.
5. Investigate for yourself. It was a simple matter to navigate to trusted news sources to see if there was any verifiable news. We opened a web browser and visited Vatican News, BBC, Reuters, AP, and CNN. Not a word on any of them about Pope Francis’ death.

This was a case of disinformation, something completely false meant to mislead or manipulate those who see it. It was easy to spot because it wasn’t very sophisticated. There are many more sophisticated attempts at disinformation—malicious content meant to create division between people and much harder to spot.

If you’d like to learn more, I highly recommend you follow the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit with a mission to ensure that students and adults are skilled in news literacy.