Political spin is nothing new, and identifying reliable news and information can be hard to do during any presidency. But the return of Donald Trump to the White House has reignited debates over truth, accountability and the role of media in a deeply divided America.
Misinformation is an umbrella term that covers all kinds of false and misleading content, and there is lots of it out there.
During Trump’s chaotic first presidency, the president himself promoted false claims about COVID-19, climate change and the 2020 election.
Now, in his second term, Trump is again using the bully pulpit of the presidency to spread false claims – for example, on Ukraine and Canada as well as immigration, inflation and, still, the 2020 election.
Meanwhile, social media platforms such as Meta have ended fact-checking programs created after Trump’s first election win, and presidential adviser Elon Musk continues to use social media platform X to amplify Trump’s false claims and his own conspiracy theories.
To stay informed while also arming yourself against misinformation, it’s crucial to practice what I call good “news hygiene” by developing strong news literacy skills.
News literacy, as I argue in my open-access 2020 book “News Literacy and Democracy” and in recent research with colleagues, is about more than fact-checking and detecting AI-generated fakes. It’s about understanding how modern media works and how content is influenced, from TikTok “newsfluencers” to FOX News to The New York...
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