Fake Art and Fake News
In this course you will look at forgeries, or "fake art". You will also be evaluating articles related to the chemistry of art for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose (aka the CRAAP test). These are skills you can use every day when dealing with fake news.
What is Fake News? Fake news is not news you disagree with.
"Fake news" is "fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent. Fake-news outlets, in turn, lack the news media's editorial norms and processes for ensuring the accuracy and credibility of information. Fake news overlaps with other information disorders, such as misinformation (false or misleading information) and disinformation (false information that is purposely spread to deceive people)." [David M. J. Lazer, et al., "The Science of Fake News," Science 09 Mar 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6380, pp. 1094-1096.]. From Evaluating News Sources, Research & Learning Services, Olin Library, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY, USA, under a CC-BY-NC-SA license.
In other words, fake news is made up, and designed to look like real news, to achieve some hidden objective. It is easily spread quickly through social media, by those who don't stop to verify the facts.
Woman at a Window, Unknown
Woman at a Window, The National Gallery, London
This image was discovered to have been a fake, painted over to be more appealing to buyers at the time. Like fake news, it covers up the facts in order to "sell" something, such as a viewpoint that may be targeted to a particular audience.
The Art of Reading Laterally
We used to tell students to evaluate sources by looking at things such as the domain of a website, for example .org vs .com, but this is no longer useful because .org can be used by sites that are created to share misinformation. Instead, you should open new tabs to search for information about the organization and people who created the website, as well as about any topics that it discusses. This is called "lateral reading", because you are searching alongside your source of information.
