LibGuides: Information Literacy Resources: Fact Checking

Fact-Checking Resources

FactCheck.org
"We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding. FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels." - FactCheck
Politifact
Pulitzer Prize-winning site operated through the Poynter Institute. "Fact-checking journalism is the heart of PolitiFact. Our core principles are independence, transparency, fairness, thorough reporting and clear writing. The reason we publish is to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy." - Politifact
ProPublica
"ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. We dig deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust." - ProPublica
Reuters Fact Check
Reuters is one of the largest and most trusted news agencies in the world. This is their fact-checking page that covers a variety of issues and shows clear methodology.
Snopes
"Snopes got its start in 1994, investigating urban legends, hoaxes, and folklore. As demand for reliable fact checks grew, so did Snopes. Now it’s the oldest and largest fact-checking site online, widely regarded by journalists, folklorists, and readers as an invaluable research companion." - Snopes
The Washington Post Fact-Checker
"In a busy 24-hour news cycle, it's hard to spot the truth behind the rhetoric. We're doing it for you." - Washington Post
Check out this link for more information: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/07/about-fact-checker/

A Beginner's Guide to Social Media Verification (Bellingcat)
"Bellingcat is an independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists brought together by a passion for open source research. "

MIT's Detect DeepFakes
How do you spot a DeepFake? How good are DeepFake videos? How well can ordinary people tell the difference between a video manipulated by AI and a normal, non-altered video? Rather than try to explain in words, we built the Detect Fakes website so you can see the answer for yourself. Detect Fakes is a research project designed to answer these questions and identify techniques to counteract AI-generated misinformation. It turns out there are many subtle signs that a video has been algorithmically manipulated. Some subtleties are explained in detail below.
Tineye
TinEye’s computer vision, image recognition and reverse image search products power applications that make your images searchable. - Tineye
True Media
A free tool that identifies political deepfakes in social media using AI. You can paste in links to images/videos and get results in seconds.

Detect DeepFakes: How to counteract misinformation created by AI

The Detect Fakes experiment offers the opportunity to learn more about DeepFakes and see how well you can discern real from fake. When it comes to AI-manipulated media, there's no single tell-tale sign of how to spot a fake. Nonetheless, there are several DeepFake artifacts that you can be on the lookout for.

Pay attention to the face. High-end DeepFake manipulations are almost always facial transformations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pay attention to facial moles. Does the mole look real?
Pay attention to blinking. Does the person blink enough or too much?
Pay attention to the lip movements. Some deepfakes are based on lip syncing. Do the lip movements look natural?

These eight questions are intended to help guide people looking through DeepFakes. High-quality DeepFakes are not easy to discern, but with practice, people can build intuition for identifying what is fake and what is real. You can practice trying to detect DeepFakes at Detect Fakes.

(MIT Media Lab) https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/detect-fakes/overview/

GovTrack
Track voting records, legislation, bill status, and speeches. This is great for checking how politicians have voted on important issues.
On The Issues
"Our mission is to provide non-partisan information for voters in the Presidential election, so that votes can be based on issues rather than on personalities and popularity. We get our information daily from newspapers, speeches, press releases, and the Internet." -OnTheIssues

Information Literacy Resources

Find Your Own Fact-Checker

Identifying Conspiracy Theories

Fact-Checking Resources

Detect DeepFakes: How to counteract misinformation created by AI