News Literacy Week: How to spot and stop misinformation online

EW Scripps has teamed up with the News Literacy Project for National News Literacy Week.

The week is designed to help viewers identify misinformation and prevent it from spreading.

In the spring of 2019, you may have seen a video on your social media timeline of a Texas woman telling food truck operators that she will call Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The video and the #TacoTruckTammy hashtag soon went viral when other social media users uploaded the video on their own timelines.

A single tweet from an individual account generated over 33,000 retweets.

But Dr. Darren Linville, who studies disinformation and online propaganda at Clemson University, says the particular account, which has since been banned by Twitter, was linked to Russia.

“(The Russians) are trying to increase the prevalence of racial conflict in America,” said Linville, who has worked with the US Senate Intelligence Committee, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Army Cyber ​​Command.

“These are very serious problems, very real things, of course, this really happened. But the (Russians) wanted to make sure you knew about it.”

Sometimes it’s not what you see online, but what you don’t see.

During the Winter Olympics last year in Beijing, China, the #GenocideGames hashtag went viral.

This should have sparked a conversation about alleged human rights violations in China.

“China did not want this hashtag to spread. So, they started flooding this hashtag with their accounts. So the real users who tried to use this hashtag to try and talk about China’s atrocities and the Beijing Olympics couldn’t do it,” Linville said.

Not only foreign influencers are trying to manipulate the cyber world.

At home, according to Linville, bad actors do this with fake stories, often aimed at political parties.

“Besides, they are often kind of a clue to things people want to believe,” Linville said. “Especially about the other side. Negative things about people they don’t like.”

Linville says the best way to avoid online fraud and misinformation is for consumers to treat the digital world as if it were the real world.

“You have to remember that when you enter the digital world, most people don’t want to harm you. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t treat strangers like they’re strangers, Linville said.

As for media organizations, Linville says they should do a better job of helping viewers understand best journalism practices.

Something that Fox 4 and our corporate owners, EW Scripps, are going to do.