#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – fighting misinformation on social media
Social networks allow news organisations to break news fast, but with that comes the pitfall of unintentionally spreading unverified facts or fake images. An in-depth feature on Poynter has good advice for news organisations on making use of social media editors and community managers to do the opposite and combat misinformation.
The piece includes contributions from social media editors at Reuters, the New York Times, and Storyful, covering issues such as when to flag up to your followers that an image circulating is fake, and when to simply ignore it.
One of the challenges as a social media editor tasked with collecting and sharing information is when to debunk and when to ignore. By asking someone where he got an image, do you put that person on notice that you’re wise to their prank, or does it just encourage them?
“Sometimes I don’t even like to mention” questionable images, De Rosa said. “But sometimes I try to question the folks that are putting them out there to see if there’s some possibility that it could be something real.”
See the full post at this link.
Tipster: Joel Gunter
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