5 Simple Questions That Will Keep You From Falling Victim to Fake News

The largest-ever study on fake news shows how bad the problem has become. Here’s how you can make it better

Photo: metamorworks/Getty Images

By Justin Bariso

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

But as recent events have shown, the sentiment is truer than ever. With the onset of social media, false stories now spread at lightning speed, reaching unprecedented numbers of people in record time.

Case in point, an unprecedented study released earlier this year. The massive research project analyzed every controversial news story in English on Twitter over the course of 10 years — 126,000 stories that were tweeted by 3 million users.

The result? Fake news dominated.

According to the researchers:

• Controlling for many factors, false news was 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth
• Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories
• The effects were most pronounced for false political news than for news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial…