So you are taking your break and it was a good time to check the Newsfeed on your social media account. Reading the status of your friends, seeing great photos with Hugot lines of your favorite pages and you just reacted to a headline of the news that caught your attention and breaks your mood. What will happen next is that you will read the content and think if you will react to it or share it to your network, so they will see how horrible that news all about.
But, what if it’s fake news? Then you are a victim.
“Nasa huli ang pagsisisi.” No one said that you will regret first before sharing, right? That is why “Think before click” was created ever since the internet invaded our lives years ago.
You can delete the news you shared, but you can’t delete what you have influenced to your friends because they already read it.
Who’s responsible for this (mess)?
Everyone. All of us are responsible for this because all of us have our own space in the World Wide Web. “But I am just sharing the news, ” Yes, it could be a good excuse.
As a blogger, I share my experiences in my personal space and I have to make sure that the content that I share will give value to my readers or inspire them at least. I feel the responsibility when I started sharing them to my Instagram, Twitter and Facebook page whenever I published a post.
I read news and interesting articles online from reliable and credible websites and bloggers that I admire when it comes to giving information that I would be interested in, or I would like to keep tabs for my future references.
Here are the qualities of a responsible blogger:
1. Validate your facts before publishing a content to avoid misrepresentation.
2. Citing all your sources. Give proper credit to whom or where credit is due.
3. Respect the Copyright Law
4. Thinking through the implications.
Careful on sharing experiences, specially when it’s a bad experience that affects the business, a blogger should write it in a good way that helps them in improving their products or services.
5. Disclose sponsored posts or professional relationships.
6. Avoid putting too much links in an article that are not relevant.
7. Control the comments of your readers. Engage with the readers.
8. A responsible blogger knows the purpose of blogging.
What is the importance of Blogging?
Gone are the days that we only rely on from the information from traditional media such as newspaper, AM radio and news on TV. In our fast paced environment, we would like to know instant information through social media, which that is why breaking news are not happening now on TV, most of them it happens in all social media channels.
The importance of Blogging is that we can give information online, especially when someone would like to know every single detail, experiences, photos and videos for them to prepare themselves before engaging to an activity, travelling, availing a service or buying products. These are information that last long even if it was published two years ago.
If you’ve landed in a good post created by a responsible blogger, then you are in a good hand, but what if you stumble upon an ugly website with a not so reliable domain or URL? Like, xyznews.com or abzblog.com for instance? I tell you to check the content right away and see who is the author or writer of that post, or if the blogger is a real person by identifying their social profiles and if the writer is unknown, then you should click the x button window of your tab and go back to search results to check the next article.
How to Identify Fake News?
Truth or fake? Again, you read a catchy headline on your Newsfeed about the current events and maybe you felt bad about it or happy about it and either way you want to share it too! Let’s go back to the basic “think before you click” into “validate before you share” that makes sense to you as a reader, right?
I have been working in a digital marketing industry for over 5 years and I've seen thousands of websites in my life and believe me it is part of my job to identify reliable website from a spammy looking website (yes!) Fake news easily spread in Facebook and that is why here are the checklist that I can share to you how to identify fake news:
1. Check the Headlines - These are the catchy headlines that are usually in all caps.
2. Check the URL or domain of the website - You can identify right away if it’s this is from a reliable website or blog.
3. Investigate the source - Some websites will put the link where is the news is cited or posted. Sometimes they curate information and by checking the source, you can identify if it’s that is true or fake.
4. Check the dates - There are hyped articles on our feed that was happening a year ago and they are trying to re-share it with social media to get more traffic to their website or to make it more viral. That is not timely and relevant to what is happening in our society.
5. Identify the Photos - Fake news use to collage photos of some public figures or use horrible images that looks not real and not matching the headline of the article.
6. Validate the reports - Look at other credible media websites to see if they’d also reported on the news. Or watch live news.
Everyone can be a blogger or enter the world of blogging, but we have to remember that we are responsible in every word that we write and in every sharing of our post to all our social channels. Know your purpose why you blog and be wisely.
Share your thoughts, leave a comment below.
Have a great day everyone!
xx
IG / Twitter: @jewelclicks
