Research Guides: Fake vs. Real: Identifying & Evaluating Information Sources: Tools & Resources

Resources

Use the following online/ free resources to verify your information sources:

You can even check to see if a particular image has been manipulated:

Regularly updated list of Fake News sites on Facebook:

The Daily Dot

Closer to home, visit the Singapore Media Literacy Council's website to find out more information authenticating sources and being a responsible global citizen:

Media Literacy Council

Useful Articles

Eight questions to ask when interpreting academic studies: A primer for media
Research tip sheets: Lessons on online search techniques, reading studies, understanding data and methods

Apps/ Extensions

A list of apps and extensions that you can add to your browser to detect fake news:

Useful Databases

Use these databases when looking for news, media and communication related articles.

Communication & Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window
The database covers broadcasting, communication arts, communication management, communication sciences, linguistics, marketing, public relations, media. It has the full text from over 400 journals. It provides indexing and abstracts from over 750 journals. It includes biographies, book chapters and reviews, case studies, essays, industry overviews and literary criticisms. Indexes publications from the National Communication Association, Global Media Journal, Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication.
Economist.com This link opens in a new window
Economist.com covers issues in global business and politics. The coverage includes the archive of articles published since 1997 from the print edition of The Economist magazine, and 2000 to current issues come complete with graphs, tables and pictures.
Factiva This link opens in a new window
Factiva combines more than 35,000 sources from 200 countries in 26 languages. Content type includes newspapers, magazines, trade journals, blogs, podcasts, websites, and newswires like Dow Jones and Reuters. Search in English, or another language of your choice. Find listed Singapore and international companies information under Companies/Markets. Take note that downloading of content for analytics is not permitted.
Financial Times This link opens in a new window
FT.com includes breaking news, commentary, data and analysis. Take advantage of the premium learning tools such as Alerts Hub, FT clippings, FT Mobile, ePaper, FT Lexicon (glossary) and annotation tool. FT archive begins with 28 January 2009 issue.
Mobile version for smart phones and tablets is available.

To access click Sign In on the top of the homepage. If you are a first-time user you will be prompted to fill in some information after logging in.
NewspaperSG This link opens in a new window
Search the contents of 19 historic and current newspapers of Singapore and Malaya. It includes The Straits Times (1845-2006), Singapore Chronicle (1831-1836), Straits Observer (1874-1897), Malayan Saturday Post (1924-1933), current newspapers like The Business Times from 2007 and TODAY from 2005. The full-text of 17 newspapers, especially The Straits Times for the period 1845-1989 can be viewed online.

Use Factiva for the full text of The Straits Times from July 1989 and Business Times from 1984.
New York Times This link opens in a new window
One-time registration is required using your SMU email address. After you have successfully created your account, you can access the content via website or mobile App. New York Times covers News, Editorials/Opinions-Columns/Op-Ed, Sports, Arts, Science, Styles, Home, Travel, and other features. News Archives are available from 1851.
Wall Street Journal This link opens in a new window
WSJ provides current global news and probing analysis of markets, corporations, financials and technology. News archive is available up to latest 7-year.

Access requirements: One-time registration is required, using your SMU email address. After you have successfully created your account, you can access the service anywhere, across devices.
WARC This link opens in a new window
WARC is a Marketing and Communications database providing resources ranging from branding to media planning & buying, adspend forecast, campaign development & tracking, audience insights, media channel intelligence and trends.

Pop Your Filter Bubble

What is a Filter Bubble?

Your own personal, unique universe of information you live in online. And what's in your filter bubble depends on who you are, and it depends on what you do. But the thing is that you don't decide what gets in. And more importantly, you don't actually see what gets edited out (via Eli Pariser's TED Talk)
The intellectual isolation that can occur when websites make use of algorithms to selectively assume the information a user would want to see, and then give information to the user according to this assumption (via Techopedia)
Information network that results from sources using its vats of data to offer us what it thinks we want to see and hear (via Digital Trends)

What can you do?

Understanding Bias and Influence in Search Tools

Search engine algorithms could influence our preexisting biases. Understand how internet search engines work and how bias and AI algorithms may influence the search results we receive.

Bias and Influence in Search Tools