Lesson 5: False News, Fakery and Advertising

Fake news is such a popular phrase, and that's why it's not in the title of this lesson. It itself is only a repackaged 'meme' from long ago. So long ago that it was around the time of Napoleon and has been edited since then from 'false news' to 'fake news' and back several times since around the mid-1800s.

How can we tell? Well, there's a wonderful Google Search you can do called Ngram. Ngram searches through books from libraries all over the world. It uses a machine to automatically turn the pages and uses a DSLR to photograph each and every page. It's like Google StreetView for ancient books.

So, hop on over here to Ngram Viewer. Then look in the books a the bottom for 1800 - 1898, 1899 - 1932, 1933 - 1938, 1939 - 2006, 2007 - 2008, and you can see where the term "false/ fake news" appears over time. Here The American Historical Register, Issue 3, November 1894 demonstrates an early use of the term 'Fake News'

Mr. Max’s links to 5 Rules for Spotting a fake from Common Sense Media

Did it really happen?

Before we begin properly, there is a way to search to see if something is false: Snopes.com . This will, or should allow you to know if something has good standing or not. And, if there is evidence to back it up. Say, The Chang' e Lunar explorer finding no trace of the American Moon landing.

However, if it's videos that you see on the Internet that, say look like this:

There is a fabulous person who can debunk such tosh and his name is: Captain Disillusion.

 The snag here is, that the measuring tape video is actually an advert for Marvin.com a company that sells windows and building supplies. You can see the red logo in both videos.

But we're too good for that though, right?

Check out these two articles and tell me what you think.

This one at the BBC.com and this at Buzzfeed: 

How can you tell they are advertising something?