This page is part of a 11-part guide on preventing folklore, rumors (or rumours), urban myths and organized misinformation campaigns from interfering with development & aid/relief efforts, and government initiatives regarding public health, the environment, etc. It is not a stand-alone page. It should be read as part of the entire guide. This is the link to the introduction and index for the other pages in this guide.

A way to help immunize a community against misinformation and "fake news" is to engage in formal media literacy campaigns. Such campaigns can help people know how to tell if something they read online is true or not, and how to teach others to do this as well. Media literacy campaigns take a lot of time to design, deliver and maintain, but the investment can quickly prevent misinformation from spreading, as community members become more savvy about evaluating sources of information and become trained to check the credibility of a message that has given them a strong emotional reaction before they share that message with others.

Some media literacy campaigns have a formal curriculum and take place within schools and target students. Some media literacy campaigns are designed to be shared online - for instance, an online quiz to test a users abilities to evaluate online news sources. It's easy to find examples of both via a search on Google or Bing. One of my favorite resources is from the Center for Media Literacy, which offers a variety of curricula and reports to use in different settings.

There are also web sites devoted to debunking specific rumors and to helping to create awareness about viral myths and misinformation campaigns. For instance,

If your country doesn't have such organizations, consider contacting journalism departments at area universities and see if they would create such an online portal as a part of their students' studies.

There are university initiatives, media companies and other groups that are developing procedures to more-immediately debunk false news stories, verification mechanisms for investigative journalism, and software tools that create automated systems to immediately identify crowdsourced efforts by professional online provocateurs and automated troll bots pumping out thousands of comments. This blog by Dan Swislow identifies some of those efforts, as well as the consequences of disinformation campaigns.

Back to the first page of this resource on preventing misinformation from interfering with development and aid initiatives.

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