Fighting disinformation: Can You Believe It?

Can You Believe It? is an initiative dedicated to uncovering how disinformation reaches consumers and providing tools to help our audience fight its spread. Are you seeing disinformation in your social media feeds? Share with us by emailing tell@mpr.org.

An MIT study tracked 126,000 stories and found that false ones were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than ones that were true.

Can you believe it? On Twitter, false stories shared more widely than true ones

March 13, 2018 5:51 AM

By Laura Sydell

An MIT study tracked 126,000 stories and found that false ones were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than ones that were true. Twitter is asking outside experts to help it deal with the problem.

Learning to decipher fake news

Learning to spot fake news: Start with a gut check

October 31, 2017 9:39 AM

By Anya Kamenetz

A new approach seeks to equip university students with the tools of fact-checkers.

7 ways to recognize and deal with fake news

July 18, 2017 2:45 PM

By Kerri Miller and Elizabeth Shockman

The Trump administration is fond of complaining about fake news. But what is fake news? What is the what is the difference between fake news and news you don't like? And how can you recognize fake news when it pops up on your Facebook timeline?

"When we started on the game, fake news, the term that we know now, wasn't even in the vernacular."

Test your fake news judgment: Play this game

July 3, 2017 5:57 AM

By Tennessee Watson

The journalist who thought up this fake news game says she saw the need before 'fake news' was even in the vernacular.

Former FBI agent Clint Watts testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday in Washington, D.C.

How Russian Twitter bots pumped out fake news during the 2016 election

April 4, 2017 10:27 AM

By Avie Schneider and Gabe O'Connor

Clint Watts, a former FBI agent, describes a diffuse network of Russian hackers and propagandists conducting a misinformation campaign that didn't stop with the election of President Trump.

Students in Scott Bedley's fifth-grade class at Plaza Vista School in Irvine, Calif., play a version of "Simon Says" with fake news.

5 ways teachers are fighting fake news

February 16, 2017 8:30 AM

By Sophia Alvarez Boyd

In an era of national attention to what's real and what isn't, we asked educators to share their strategies for helping students sort out fact from fiction.

A finder's guide to facts

December 11, 2016 9:38 AM

By Steve Inskeep

A recent deluge of fake news suggests we live in a "post-truth" era. But NPR's Steve Inskeep says it would be more accurate to call this a "post-trust" era. Here are his tips to sniff out the suspect sources.

A gunman's appearance at a Washington, D.C., pizzeria that was falsely reported to house a pedophilia ring has elevated worries over the unrelenting rise of fake news on the Internet.

What legal recourse do victims of fake news stories have?

December 7, 2016 7:04 PM

Fake news played a bigger role in this past presidential election than ever seen before. And sometimes it has had serious repercussions for real people and businesses.

Fake news has been in the news recently, as it was especially prevalent throughout the presidential election and because of the impact it might have had on voters.

Fake or real? How to self-check the news and get the facts

December 5, 2016 1:12 PM

Your friend shares a story on Facebook. You read the headline and you think it's too good to be true, but it looks like it's from a news site. Experts offer tips to help you sniff out fact from fake.

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right."

We tracked down a fake-news creator in the suburbs. Here's what we learned

November 23, 2016 5:58 PM

By Laura Sydell

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right," says Jestin Coler, whose company, Disinfomedia, is behind some fake news sites.