Why Fact Check?
From the League of Women Voters, "Any news source with credibility, integrity, and accuracy relies on facts. In a time where not all news is based in truth, it’s crucial to grasp the basics of fact-checking when consuming media." Fact checking is a skill that helps you make better decisions about the information/media you consume, your understanding of situations big and small, and helps you help your community by being a trusted source.
What is Reverse Image Searching?
"Reverse Image Search is what you would do to find the creator/ owner of an image online when you do not know the source. You can use Google Image Search or Tineye to help find the creator/ owner of an image. However, sometimes these searches are not exact and you will have to sift through the results to find the one you are looking for. If you cannot decide which result is the best one, do your best & provide:
What is Information Cynicism?
From the Online Consortium of Oklahoma, "when skepticism turns to cynicism and deep distrust, research can become unproductive. Information cynics may feel powerless to identify reliable and useful sources. That is, while learning to question everything, they have begun to believe nothing—even highly-credible sources of information." These are some additional resources on what this is, how to combat it, and how to build healthy skepticism when looking at resources.
Bias, and Why It Matters
Humans are prone to bias, which we define here as an attitude that always favors one way of feeling or acting over any other. Therefore, anything that humans create--including information--is also prone to bias. Unrestrained bias can result in unfair treatment.
When you check information, it is important to look for underlying bias. Discovering bias does not mean that you should completely disregard any information, but rather, you should carefully consider how much weight you give to that information.
Below you will find several sources that may help you think about ways to address bias during your information checking:
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