Insight

If ever there was a time to double check information gotten from social media, the time is now especially with the advent of technology and digital tools where anyone is allowed to create and disseminate information. A recent study analysed tweets from 2006-2017, specifically 126,000 stories (all debunked by fact-checking agencies) tweeted by about three million people more than 4.5 million times. The study however showed that a fake news item has got 70 percent possibility of being retweeted than real news, also the top 1 percent of fake news ultimately reached between 1,000 and 100,000 people (while the truth rarely reached more than 1,000 people). The spread of fake news is becoming alarming and it is important to know that you too can be a cross checker. Although spotting fake news is not very easy, there are some simple factors one could always look out for: Take a closer look at the headline . If the claims in the headline sounds unbelievable, do a quick verificat