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2024 Election and Voting Resources: Mis- and Disinformation

This community guide contains unbiased resources and information about voting and the upcoming November 2024 election.

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Every day, we are exposed to lots of information from lots of different sources online. This section aims to provide some guidance about how to approach evaluating sources, including news sources.

Sources are cited and/or linked below the text. 

Key Dates: voter registration deadline (October 26, 2024), last day to request a mail-in ballot (October 29, 2024), early voting period (October 19-November 1, 2024).

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Definitions

Misinformation: incorrect or misleading information

Disinformation: false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth

  • Satire/parody: a subject is mocked or exaggerated to poke fun at views or expose practices the creator of the satire or parody disagrees with 
  • Misleading content: information and half-truths presented in such a way as to place a person or an issue in a negative light
  • Imposter content: information from a source that deliberately impersonates a known and trustworthy source
  • False content: legitimate, truthful content is mixed with intentionally false content to give credibility to the false content
  • Fabricated content: information that is composed completely of information the source knows to be false
  • False connection: information that implies something in a headline, photo, video clip, or caption that is not a fair representation of the body of the article or other content
  • Manipulated content: content that is intentionally altered to create a false impression. An example is photo-shopping an individual into a photo at an event where they were not present

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Disinformation. In Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved October 2, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disinformation

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Misinformation. In Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved October 2, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misinformation

Ungvarsky, J. (2024). Disinformation. Salem Press Encyclopedia.

Fake news: A work of fiction that is presented as a factual news story, often with the intent of deceiving the reader into believing it is factual and enticing them to share it. The term has also been used to undermine established media outlets by questioning the validity of real, factual news

  • Biased news: A way of reporting on a factual news story that is designed to sway a reader toward a specific conclusion. This differs from fake news because the underlying facts are true but may be presented selectively or misleadingly to encourage the reader to think a particular way
  • Click bait: A term used to describe articles, either real or fake, that have attention-grabbing headlines and intentionally inflammatory content, designed to entice readers to click on the article and share the content
  • Confirmation bias: A tendency of people to seek out and trust sources that affirm a belief they already hold and to distrust sources that contradict their existing beliefs
  • Deepfake: An image or video in which a person's features are manipulated through sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to create a convincing fictional representation

DiLascio-Martinuk, T. M. . E. (2024). Fake News: Overview. Points of View.

Pink slime journalism: 

  • Outlets that pose as local news
  • Lack the ethics of legitimate news organizations
  • Often produced through automation and templates
  • Often funded by outside companies with a partisan source of financing 

Aguiar, A. (2023, October 5). An illustrated guide to 'pink slime' journalism. Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2023/pink-slime-journalism-local-news-deserts/

Evaluating Resources

Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims, quotes, and media back to the original contextFrom "SIFT (The Four Moves)" on Michael A. Caulfield's blog Hapgood; it is licensed under a CC by 4.0 license. 

1. Stop:

  • Do you know and trust this source of information?
  • Check your emotions: headlines can cause strong emotional reactions to get clicks. 

2. Investigate the source:

  • Just add Wikipedia: Search for the author, publisher, organization, or site in Google. Do they have a Wikipedia page? If not, that may be a sign this source is not reputable. 
  • Read laterally: What are other sources saying about the reputation of the author, publisher, organization, or site? 
  • Hover: To find more information about a source on a social media platform like X, hover over or click on the link to the user profile. 
  • Check the date: Is this information current? Has the story been updated?
  • Ask questions:
    • Is this source what I thought it was?
    • Is there anything that might disqualify this as a source?
    • Does this source have the expertise and/or resources to do original reporting in this area?

3. Find better coverage:

  • Do a Google Search for the subject of the article or claim. Who else is covering this? 
  • Has a fact checker site looked into this claim? (See the "Fact Checkers" tab.)

4. Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context:

  • Click through links in your article or its bibliography to the original source, such as a research study. Reliable news sources indicate the people, places, and documents from which they received their information.
  • Reading information in its original context helps to address false framing, where a source links a real article but summarizes it in a deceptive way

Caulfield, M. A. (n.d.) Check Please! Starter Course [MOOC]. Notion. https://checkpleasecc.notion.site/Check-Please-Starter-Course-ae34d043575e42828dc2964437ea4eed

How to spot fake news: consider the source (click away from the story to investigate the site, its mission, and its contact info), read beyond (headlines can be outrageous in an effort to get clicks - what's the whole story?), check the author (do a quick search on the author - are they credible? are they real?), supporting sources? (click on those links and determine if the info given actually supports the story), check the date (reposting old news stories doesn't mean they're relevant to current events), is it a joke? (if it is too outlandish, it might be satire - research the site and author to be sure), check your biases (consider if your own beliefs could affect your judgement), ask the experts (ask a librarian, or consult a fact-checking site)

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). (2017). How To Spot Fake News [Image]. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/167

  1. Look for text that is more generic than expected or lacks context 
  2. Read the "About Us" page. Who runs this outlet? 
  3. Does the publisher of this site have a reputation for delivering news with a particular bias? Research your news publication using a bias checker, such as AllSides. 
  4. Who funds the site? Does the money come from a source that is pushing a certain view? 
  5. Has a fact checker site looked into this site? (See the "Fact Checkers" tab.)

Aguiar, A. (2023, October 5). An illustrated guide to 'pink slime' journalism. Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2023/pink-slime-journalism-local-news-deserts/

Reverse image search:

  • Are the images intended to evoke an emotional response from the reader? Do they match the story? Upload the image or copy and paste the website URL to Google Images. 

Spotting deepfakes: 

  1. Pay attention to the face. High-end deepfake manipulations are almost always facial transformations. 
  2. Pay attention to the cheeks and forehead. Does the skin appear too smooth or too wrinkly? Is the agedness of the skin similar to the agedness of the hair and eyes? Deepfakes may be incongruent on some dimensions.
  3. Pay attention to the eyes and eyebrows. Do shadows appear in places that you would expect? Deepfakes may fail to fully represent the natural physics of a scene. 
  4. Pay attention to the glasses. Is there any glare? Is there too much glare? Does the angle of the glare change when the person moves? Once again, Deepfakes may fail to fully represent the natural physics of lighting.
  5. Pay attention to the facial hair or lack thereof. Does this facial hair look real? Deepfakes might add or remove a mustache, sideburns, or beard. But, Deepfakes may fail to make facial hair transformations fully natural.
  6. Pay attention to facial moles. Does the mole look real? 
  7. Pay attention to blinking. Does the person blink enough or too much? 
  8. Pay attention to the lip movements. Some deepfakes are based on lip syncing. Do the lip movements look natural?

MIT Media Lab. (n.d.). Detect DeepFakes: How to counteract misinformation created by AI. https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/detect-fakes/overview/