Gone are the days when the only sources of news are the daily newspapers and magazine editions. With the advent of the Internet, the dissemination of news has now become very easy. However, the caveat is that it has also become very easy to share fake news. This is because websites are not exactly monitored as strictly as newspapers are.

Considering the fact that blogging is now one of the most popular online businesses in Nigeria, there are now so many channels of news. A lot of bloggers just copy and paste posts from other blogs and sites without even making prior confirmations.

Also, sharing of fake news has now become very popular on our social media platforms. The bad thing about it is that a lot of people believe the news articles, taking the posts hook, line and sinker. In some cases, this may have some pretty serious effects on the readers.

The question now is about how to identify fake news. It's pretty easy if you do these five things.

1. Confirm News Articles From Multiple Sources
This is one of the best way to confirm if a news article is fake. The bad news, however, is that Nigerian bloggers tend to copy directly from other blogs a lot. But if you do your assignment right, you will eventually know if the news is true. There are a lot of websites you can actually trust.

2. Confirm From The Social Media Handles Of Those Involved
A lot of news articles are simply curated from the social media handles of people. This is especially common in Nigeria where bloggers visit the social media handles of celebrities and come up with news from their posts and pictures. If a blogger says that a celebrity said something, you can simply visit the celebrity's social media pages to confirm.

3. Check The Credibility Of The Website
New websites spring up every day, serving various purposes. A new news website simply joins the train and starts posting news. If you come across a news article from a website you are not used to, you can simply do a background check on the website to know if it can be trusted. Play your part by finding out about the website before you swallow fake news like eba.

4. Read Beyond The Headlines
It has been found that a lot of readers of news articles do not even read beyond the headlines. After reading the headlines, they believe that they already know the story and they simply share it like that. Some deceptive bloggers know this, so they simply use clickbaits. They come up with headlines that you are almost always likely to click. Imagine a news headline like "Ambode Slaps Tinubu". That headline would likely be a trending story if it were true. So, a news website could use that and eventually explain in the body of the article, that "What Ambode did was a slap on Tinubu's face". Imagine the difference. But if you don't read beyond the headline, you might not know that it is actually fake.

5. Take News Articles With A Grain Of Salt If Sources Are Not Cited
This form of "news" is very popular on the WhatsApp chatting platform. You just wake up one day and see a long news article in one of the groups you belong to. At the end of the news, no source is cited. Don't be quick to share it as news to someone else. A lot of fake news have been shared that way to unsuspecting readers. Try to only believe stories from credible sources. If you see a post with no source cited, do well to confirm it from trusted sites.

Source: https://www.nigerianindex.com/top-5-ways-to-identify-fake-news/

Cc:
Lalasticlala
Mynd44
Dominique

Everybody is now a blogger in Nigeria and 95% of them are "copy and paste" bloggers. Too many fake news in this country and
I hardly believe everything i read online today unless i watch the video. Even vids can be edited sef. Unintelligent ppl easily believe fake news.