LibGuides: Media Literacy & Misinformation: Reliable Sources

You Have the Power

You can help stem the tide of "fake news" and misinformation!

Don't fall for the "clickbait" by clicking the links on ads or questionable news headlines. Visiting a site through one of these links generates revenue for the creator and encourages the practice. Use adblocking and site-sourcing apps and browser extensions.

Flag or report suspicious content to vendor or publisher.

Support legitimate news sources by using the suggested resources on this page and in the Monmouth University Library.

Be a critical thinker and good digital citizen by using and sharing information carefully and responsibly.

Ask a librarian!

Organizations

Organizations that offer news, media literacy and cyber security information and resources:

American Library Association

Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University

Cyberwise

Factchequeado (Spanish language fact checking platform) logo Factchequeado

iMediaEthics

Indiana University Observatory on Social Media

Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island

Media Literacy Now

National Association for Media Literacy Education

The News Literacy Project

The Poynter Institute

Project Information Literacy

Project Look Sharp

Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics & Public Policy

Society of Professional Journalists

Stanford Internet Observatory

Trusted Sources

Per The Pew Research Center's study titled Political Polarization and Media Habits, there is no one "most trusted" news source. It's up to you to think critically and use your best judgment!

PR & Corporations

The Center for Media & Democracy investigates corporate "front" groups to determine who's really pulling the strings. Use their ExposedbyCMD resources to locate the power behind the big corporations. Note: as of 2021, this is a new title and website for this project. Materials collected prior to 2021 are available here.

Social Media Distrust

Per 2019 Pew Research poll, most Americans do NOT trust social media as a source for political and election news.

Mistakes Were Made

Another point to consider when verifying information is its validity over time. Even with the editorial process and peer review being such a large part of academic publication, nothing is 100% infallible. Errors happen, but scientists can be loathe to admit it. RetractionWatch is a blog that researches and exposes misconduct with respect to academic journals and provides a database of academic articles that have been retracted due to improper research methods and/or data that is either faulty or has been significantly updated.

Podcasts

Selected podcasts on conspiracy theories, misinformation/disinformation, technology and mass media. See also - 2021 list of conspiracy theory podcast episodes from Mashable.

America, Interrupted America, Interrupted is an original podcast from the PBS NewsHour about how our lives were turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic and how we're making sense of it.
Death by Conspiracy Explores the onslaught of pandemic pseudoscience through the story of Gary Matthews, a man described as gentle and good-natured, until his lifelong interest in fringe politics snowballed into a destructive distrust of experts in any form.
Decode Recode Kara Swisher interviews tech execs, politicians, celebrities and more about power, change, and big ideas. Focus on emerging technology.
Disinformation How do you know what's real on social media or TV? That's the premise behind "Disinformation" - with award-winning Evergreen host Paul Brandus. Get ready for amazing stories - war, espionage, corruption, elections, and assorted trickery showing how false information is turning our world inside out - and what we can do about it. Remember: Don't believe everything you read!
Does Not Compute Does Not Compute is a podcast about technology, people, and power brought to you by the Center for Information, Technology, & Public Life (CITAP) at UNC-Chapel Hill. At CITAP, we study technology as it’s tangled up in our lives and societies. On Does Not Compute, we’ll pry into the black boxes and get to know the people behind the code to understand technology platforms in context. Together, we’ll explore how old inequities get reinvented on new platforms, how unexpected communities unite for good (and harm), and how media manipulators play on our identities and emotions to spread lies.
Hoaxed An investigation into one of the most serious British conspiracy theories of all time.
Moderated Content Moderated Content from Stanford Law School is podcast content about content moderation, moderated by assistant professor Evelyn Douek. The community standards of this podcast prohibit anything except the wonkiest conversations about the regulation—both public and private—of what you see, hear and do online. Moderated Content is produced in partnership with Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center.
Technically Optimistic What does it take to build technology for good? Journey into the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence with Raffi Krikorian, Chief Technology Officer of Emerson Collective as he unpacks how this transformational technology can be developed and deployed with society’s best interests at its core. Raffi engages experts in the field—technologists, historians, venture capitalists, and government officials—on how to harness the incredible potential of AI while mitigating its risks. Through a four episode limited series, hear the intimate stories of those working at the front lines of technology. Listeners will get a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the ethics, tradeoffs, and opportunities posed by the upcoming AI revolution. The future is unknown, but we are technically optimistic.
Tiffany Dover is Dead Welcome to one of the internet’s weirdest obsessions. Back in December of 2020, a nurse named Tiffany Dover fainted on camera while she was talking to reporters after getting her first COVID shot. She got right back up and gave another interview, but it was too late. A conspiracy theory was already racing around the world: Dover had died. She’d been replaced by a body double. And an ever-expanding list of conspirators was in on the cover-up, including the drug companies, the hospital, the media, and maybe even the Pope. Tiffany Dover is alive and well, but she’s stayed silent through it all. And now her story has been hijacked by total strangers trying to make people doubt the safety of the COVID vaccine. In this first season of Truthers, a podcast project about misinformation and conspiracy theories, NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny sets out to show what’s true and what isn’t—and how one person’s life became a weapon in a global information war.
Untangling Disinformation Special series from NPR.
Will be Wild Will Be Wild is an 8-part series about the forces that led to the January 6th insurrection and what comes next. Through in-depth stories from a wide range of characters – from people who tried to stop the attack to those who took part – hosts Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz explore the ongoing effort to bring autocracy to America, the lasting damage that effort is doing to our democracy, and the fate of our attempts to combat those anti-democratic forces. Because January 6th wasn't the end of the story, January 6th was just a practice run.

Confirmation Bias is Not New

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it."

- Sir Francis Bacon in Novum Organum (1620)

Academic Programs

A short list of academic programs focusing on news/media literacy education, misinformation/disinformation, emerging technology and mass media.

Nonprofit Organizations

A short list of nonprofits focusing on news/media literacy education, misinformation/disinformation, and mass media.

Journals

The Bulletin of Technology & Public Life The Bulletin of Technology and Public Life centers questions of power, history, and culture in how we understand the impact of emerging technologies on democracy and society.
HKS Misinformation Review Peer-reviewed, scholarly publication from Harvard Kennedy School. Content is produced and “fast-reviewed” by misinformation scientists and scholars, released under open access licensing, and geared towards emphasizing real-world implications.
Journal of Online Trust & Safety Journal from the Stanford Internet Observatory dedicated to scholarly research on trust and safety research in online environments across a variety of disciplines.

Newsletters/Blogs

Suggested newsletters/blogs focusing upon mass media, technology and misinformation/disinformation.

Galaxy Brain Newsletter by Charlie Warzel, a journalist who writes about technology media and politics. Previously published on BuzzFeed News and the New York Times.
The Platformer "News at the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy" from Casey Newton.
Understanding AI

Our Library Resources

These library databases will help you find reliable information, but no database or source is foolproof. Use the tools found throughout this guide along with your critical thinking skills to determine whether a source is truly reliable!

New York Times Historical: 1851-2019 This link opens in a new window This database offers full-page digital reproductions of every page (images and articles) from every issue, cover to cover, from the New York Times in downloadable PDF files.
NexisUni (LexisNexis) This link opens in a new window Comprehensive source for current news (international, national and regional), legal research (cases and statutes, law reviews, news), business research (news, company information), medical information (news, journal articles, Medline abstracts) and basic reference tools.
Newsstream (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window Full text of U.S. and international news sources. Includes coverage of major U.S. and international newspapers such as The New York Times and the Times of London, plus hundreds of other news sources and newswires.
Regional Business News (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window Contains material from business journals, newspapers, newswires. Hosted on the EBSCOhost platform.
Wall Street Journal (Historical -- 1984-Present) This link opens in a new window Search the full text of the Wall Street Journal from 1984 to the present.
Westlaw Campus Research Law, News and Business This link opens in a new window Students can work more efficiently and productively, and with more confidence, with Thomson Reuters Westlaw Campus Research, a premier research service for the legal, news, and business-related information they need.