Media Literacy and Source Verification

[Dr. Emily Vraga] There are media literacy skills, including source verification. And this one’s really important because although there’s a lot of misinformation on social media, a lot of it originates from just a few really bad actors. So one study found that 65% of all anti-vaccine misinformation on social media came from just 12 accounts, most of whom had a financial or political gain associated with that misinformation. We can teach young people to be looking outside of where they are for verification, but not necessarily just clicking the top source that they see, but looking at lots of different information, checking their bearings. If nothing – if no prominent expert or news organization is reporting on it, it might not be true.