Combating Fake News in the Digital Age Joanna M. Burkhardt
Some fake websites were created in the early years of generalized web use. Some of these hoax websites were satire. Others were meant to mislead or deliber- ately spread biased or fake news. Early library instruc- tion classes used these types of website as cautionary examples of what an internet user needed to look for. Using a checklist of criteria to identify fake news web- sites was relatively easy. A few hoax website favor- ites are
• DHMO.org. This website claims that the com- pound DHMO (Dihydrogen Monoxide), a compo- nent of just about everything, has been linked to terrible problems such as cancer, acid rain, and global warming. While everything suggested on the website is true, it is not until one’s high school chemistry kicks in that the joke is revealed— DHMO and H2O are the same thing.
• Feline Reactions to Bearded Men. Another popular piece of fake news is a “research study” regarding the reactions of cats to bearded men. This study is reported as if it had been published in a scientific journal. It includes a literature review, a descrip- tion of the experiment, the raw data resulting from the experiment, and the conclusions reached by the researchers as a result. It is not until the reader gets to the bibliography of the article that the experiment is revealed to be a hoax. Included in the bibliography are articles supposedly writ- ten by Madonna Louise Ciccone (Madonna the singer), A. Schwartzenegger (Arnold, perhaps?), and Doctor Seuss and published in journals such as the Western Musicology Journal, Tonsological Proceedings, and the Journal of Feline Forensic Studies.
• city-mankato.us. One of the first websites to make use of website technology to mislead and mis- direct was a fake site for the city of Mankato, Minnesota. This website describes the climate as temperate to tropical, claiming that a geologi- cal anomaly allows the Mankato Valley to enjoy a year-round temperature of no less than 70 degrees Fahrenheit, while providing snow year- round at nearby Mount Kroto. It reported that one could watch the summer migration of whales up the Minnesota River. An insert shows a picture of a beach, with a second insert showing the current temperature—both tropical. The website proudly announces that it is a Yahoo “Pick of the Week” site and has been featured by the New York Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Needless to say, no geological anomaly of this type exists in Min- nesota. Whales do not migrate up (or down) the Minnesota River at any time, and the pictures of the beaches and the thermometer are actually showing beaches and temperatures from places very far south of Mankato. It is true that Yahoo,
the New York Times, and the Minneapolis Star Tri- bune featured this website, but not for the rea- sons you might think. When fake news could still be amusing, this website proved both clever and ironic.
• MartinLutherKing.org. This website was created by Stormfront, a white supremacist group, to try to mislead readers about the Civil Rights activ- ist by discrediting his work, his writing, and his personal life.11 The fact that the website used the .org domain extension convinced a number of people that it was unbiased because the domain extension was usually associated with nonprofit organizations working for good. The authors of the website did not reveal themselves nor did they state their affiliations. Using Martin Luther King’s name for the website insured that people looking for information about King could easily arrive at this fake news website. This website is no longer active.