Evaluating News Sources

It's hard not to share shocking or amazing things through social media.  And even if you are not sharing, anytime you go online to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc, you will find some viral post or video which may or may not be real.  

How do you determine if a Twitter post is real?

• Check the account
• Has it been active long?  How many tweets does it have?
• If there are only a few tweets that could be a sign.  If the source is known, but the account was just created, that is another warning

If you see a tweet on a site other than Twitter, make sure that you can click on the tweet and it takes you to that account. Don't believe an image of a tweet.

Images:

It is incredibly easy to manipulate an image.  Use sources like Google Images and TinEye to perform a reverse image search.

Video

It is also  incredibly easy to manipulate a video.  Check out these sources for tips on spotting a fake video: