How can a society awash in misinformation combat the powerful impact of fake news? Although false online information has been around since the early days of the Internet, it has exploded in the public consciousness since 2016 and remains a threat to democratic elections around the world.
It’s difficult to identify a reliable website and people often forward fake news unintentionally. Social media platforms have struggled to constrain fake news while keeping their businesses models intact, and governments understandably face charges of censorship when they step into the fray.
Helen Lee Bouygues, president of the Reboot Foundation, offers some tools that news consumers can use to fight back. How to understand the purpose of the message we are receiving in a news dispatch and to identify rhetorical tools the creators use to convince us of their argument are among the strategies she covers. Bouygues also examines the prevalence of fake news within the context of broader problems in public discourse today.
