How to spot misinformation online and avoid falling for false claims in this presidential election

Hours after former President Donald Trump suffered a wound to his upper right ear in an attempted assassination on July 13, social media users on X outlandishly declared that the (unsevered) ear “grew back.”

Last week, after President Joe Biden announced he won’t seek re-election, boxer Ryan Garcia joined others buzzing incorrectly online that Biden had died.

After Vice President Kamala Harris quickly launched her presidential campaign upon Biden’s exit, Trump began discharging a barrage of falsehoods about her, making at least 10 erroneous claims in a single speech in North Carolina on Thursday — including the lie that she supports executing babies.

As the noisy worlds of X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Truth Social have continued to pump out torrents of deceptions, distortions, and inaccuracies, experts tell us it’s more important than ever to learn how to recognize and reject misinformation.

With the number of days until Nov. 5 dwindling, the magnitude of fabricated online political content is expected to expand and intensify.

“When news breaks, there’s so much more activity on social media and from accounts of people you shouldn’t trust,” said Dan Evon, a senior manager at the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan news-education nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. “Their goal is to create doubt and chaos, but it’s up to you to be extra careful about what you’re consuming.”

Evon runs RumorGuard, which debunks false information spreading online.

False claims can be created more cheaply and disseminated more quickly than corrective information, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a group of scholars helping world leaders manage global problems.

Also, it’s important to remember that when news breaks, all the facts don’t neatly arrange themselves in a timely order. That leaves gaps in stories that bad actors online can fill with fallacies and errors.

“Misinformation proliferates when there’s not enough definitive information in the wake of a big event,” said Katie Sanders, editor-in-chief of PolitiFact, a fact-checking website that’s part of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. “That’s when you start noticing really wild theories flying around right away.

“And I can’t think of a more high-profile example than the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Trump.”

Almost immediately, social media users spouted conspiracy theories that the shooting was staged by Trump, Sanders said, or that the “deep state” manufactured the moment to take out a candidate who posed a threat.

In some cases, she said, people incorrectly named various individuals as the shooter. “We fact-checked four or five innocent people, all of them who were dragged online with their photos,” Sanders said.

If there’s no instant answer to every question stemming from a major news event, one must “train the brain to wait” before sharing a dubious item, Sanders said — an admittedly difficult task.

Remember, though, journalists covering big moments “want the news faster more than anyone,” she added. But they’re trained to check before they disseminate what they’ve learned.

“For others,” Sanders said, “there is no penalty for getting it wrong, no social shame. In fact, fooling people has launched careers in this age. The loudest voice often attracts the most followers and the most attention.”

And, apparently, the most advertising money.

Writing in The Conversation, a scholarly online journal, Carlos Diaz Ruiz, a professor at the Hanken School of Economics in Finland, said that deceptive online content that generates more clicks, views, or engagements means more money from advertisers in a now-$750 billion market.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit law and public policy institute, advises that anyone interested in vetting content should “go straight to a credible independent fact-checking site.” These include PolitiFact and AP Factcheck, or sites verified by the International Fact-Checking Network, or the Artificial Intelligence Incident Database operated by the Responsible AI Collaborative.

Also, Sanders says, there are good strategies online readers can utilize, the primary rule of which is to be skeptical of much of what you see.

Then, like any fact-checker, your first step with dubious content is to look up key words on Google to get a better understanding of context and meaning.

Second, who else is corroborating the item? Is it simply a single poster on X?

Third, search deeper about whoever is posting to learn whether they have a particular political point of view.

Other fact-checking sources offer various tips for sussing out the truth.

Consider your own biases, says The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command in Virginia, in charge of educating and establishing standards for the armed forces. Could your beliefs be affecting your judgment of what you’re reading, tempting you to disseminate it?

Also, “headlines can be outrageous in an effort to get clicks,” the Army advises. Ask yourself, “Is this a joke? It might be satire. Research the site and author to be sure.”

Pro Publica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power, recommends that you understand that any social media post playing to your emotions can be suspect and therefore deserves caution.

The News Literacy Project asks us to be skeptical about items online that:

The Project reminds us that “bots are extremely active on social media and are designed to dominate conversations and spread propaganda.”

The American Psychological Association reports that misinformation can be “sticky” — hanging around in our brains for years after the erroneous facts have been corrected. This is especially true of items that evoke contempt or fear, or are frequently liked, commented on, or shared online.

Also helping misinformation linger is confirmation bias, which makes us less likely to doubt or check out information that conforms with our views.