Fake News

Watch out for texts that are abbreviated to headlines and convey little content but a lot of opinion

Is it plausible? Is it a joke or even satire? Is it sensational or pulling on your emotions? Listen to your instincts

• Author/copyright and legal notice - who wrote it? What and who is listed in the legal notice? What else has this author published? In Germany, commercial communications are required to provide a legal notice. So watch out if there is no legal notice or if a foreign PO box is given!

• Check sources – is information on sources provided in the message? Are there several sources? In what context can the source still be found online? What do other sources report about the message?

• Enter the title or parts of the message in a search engine – where did this message come from? Is it reported in other places and media? Or does it appear in a completely different context?

• Check the time and date information – is the message current? Is there a creation date? Are there inconsistencies with the date of publication?

• Examine the URL - it may differ slightly from the original e.g. a well-known media brand, with an additional hyphen or ending like “.net”

• Enter the message in a fact checker website, e.g. Mimikama, Hoaxmap or Volksverpetzer – is it already listed here as a fake? Has it already been checked to confirm whether or not it is genuine?
  Mimikama
  Hoaxmap

If you would like to find out more about a subject and form an opinion on that subject, then do more research to gather more information and view the subject from different perspectives. Enter various keywords relating to the subject into a search engine. Speak to other people and discuss the information and opinions you have found.

• Images are often just extracts that reflect reality in a distorted way or are used in the wrong contexts. In videos, speakers have incorrect words put into their mouths, so they say things that they never actually said – where and in what context was the original published?
  Examples of reverse image search engines:
  Google reverse image search
  Yandex image search
  TinEye​​​​​​​

So-called deep fakes in images and videos swap people’s faces and transfer body movements made by one person to another person. If possible, check the origin of the image or recording. Once again, trust your instincts. If you watch what are usually very short videos slowly and carefully, you will notice inconsistencies and weak points – are the faces flickering? Are the people blinking all the time or too slowly? Do the movements or whole body look strange somehow?

There is a research tool for videos with a Youtube link, YouTube Dataviewer by Amnesty International, which displays the creation date and preview images.
YouTube Dataviewer