The News Literacy Project is a nonpartisan national education nonprofit to educate the public on how to detect false and misleading information. It has compiled 10 takeaways from distortions by social media and other sources in 2021.
1. Science misinformation
No, vaccines don’t magnetize you, increase the risk of infertility, contain tracking devices, or cause cancer and HIV. But misinformation surrounding vaccines — along with other science-based topics like climate change — continued to deluge social media feeds throughout the year.
News literacy takeaway: Turn to credible, authoritative sources to confirm or debunk science-related content, such as NLP’s COVID-19 resources page or reputable institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And know that bad actors will even resort to cute cat videos as “engagement bait” to draw you to their sites and spread falsehoods.
2. Protests and crowds
Photos supposedly showing large crowds protesting or supporting controversial issues appeared frequently through the year in misleading ways. For example, one photo did not show a large crowd gathering in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2021, the day before a demonstration to support former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election ended in riots. Instead, it showed people participating in the “March for Our Lives” gun control demonstration in 2018. A photo of mass demonstrations in Moscow in 1991 circulated online as “evidence” of large...
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