Disclaimer: I don’t have any professional training in fact-checking. Fortunately, you don’t need any to combat fake news.

Now that Mother Nature has put us in us our place, let us all vow to hold on to our sanity during this pandemic. It’s bad enough spreading and/or developing a disease with no vaccine and no treatment, let alone developing and/or spreading fake news about said disease.

How do you know whether or not that Whatsapp forward mentioning that COVID-19 infection can be cured by drinking tea (ineffective but go ahead), bathing in hydrogen peroxide (don’t) or gargling with bleach (definitely DON’T!) is fake? Why even bother to verify bad news, easy cure claims or conspiracy theories, when the situation is already dire and forwarding staff feels like doing something, especially during isolation? Does it matter if a Facebook post falsely claims that a novel published in 1981 (prophetic, eh?) contains proof that the Chinese Government created COVID-19 in a laboratory?

Let us first get the “why” out of the way. Fake news is harmful, period. It can cause panic and be counterproductive. It can convince gullible people to try things that are harmful. It can catalyze social conflict and fuel xenophobia and racism. It can aide charlatans to profit off of people’s fear and ignorance. These are of course just examples of ill effects of fake news, and are by no means exhaustive.

Once you are mentally prepared to find and fight disinformation, it is not that difficult to spot. Following are some methods that I personally use to separate fact from fiction on social media platforms.

Platform: If you read something on a platform where anyone can publish anything without vetting, be very skeptical about the information. To borrow a phrase from Mother Jones journalist Sinduja Rangarajan, platforms like Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are global petri dishes of misinformation. The personal credentials of the people who shared the post on your feed do not matter. You may believe that your boss or cousin or neighbour with impeccable moral character would never share a false story. However, they might have seen the post from someone who they know and trust in real life and have become a link in the chain of misinformation.

To summarize, be skeptical of information published on non-vetted platforms and do not equate someone’s trustworthiness in real life to the truthfulness of their posts on social media.

Tall Claims and Bad Writing: If a news story seems too good, too bad or too outrageous to be true, it probably is. Keep an eye out for lots of superlatives and exclamatory signs. Misspelled words, incorrect grammar and overly emotional language are other telltale signs of fake news. Also, if a cure for coronavirus is discovered, surely you won’t come to know about it first from a badly written random forwarded post on a random Whatsapp group.

Keyword Search: Articles contain certain significant representative words. If you search these words using a search engine (google.com, duckduckgo.com etc.), there is a high chance that you will find fact-checking articles about the dubious article. For example, a post about antioxidants in tea preventing and curing coronavirus has recently gone viral on Facebook and Whatsapp. If you search “tea cure coronavirus”, you’ll find multiple articles that have thoroughly debunked the entire post. If you are not sure what keywords to search, you can also copy the first one or two sentences from the dubious post and paste it in the search engine. How do you know if a fact-checking article is reliable? Check the publishing platform. If it is the site of a registered and reputed media organization, there is a high chance that it can be trusted. Additionally, you can yourself search and vet the individual claims made in the fact-checking articles. For example, the tea-cures-coronavirus post claims that it is sourced from a breaking news report from CNN. The fact-checking articles claim that there has been no such reporting by CNN. You can go to see CNN site and see for yourself that the fact-checkers are correct.

To summarize, search keywords or sentences from the dubious article. You’ll most likely come to know whether or not it is factual.

Reverse Image Search: Misleading, edited, out-of-context photos also circulate a lot on social media platforms. The origin of these photos can be easily verifies using reverse image search. For example, an image of a man and a woman in medical scrubs standing face to face recently made the rounds on social media. The caption (written in an overtly emotional language) claimed that they were a physician couple in Italy who treated many COVID-19 patients, got infected themselves and shared a last kiss before dying. However, reverse image search showed that the original picture was taken at the Barcelona airport in Spain. An additional red flag in the image caption was that it did not mention the doctors’ names.

Authentic Source, Inauthentic News: Unfortunately, sometimes even authentic news platforms publish misleading or outright false stories. Though there is a good chance of these stories being vetted post publication and subsequently being edited or taken down, the credibility provided by the source may increase the reach and impact of these stories.

In such cases, first vet the author. Make sure that the author is qualified to give opinion on the topic(s) of the article and has no conflict of interest. For example, suppose Dr. X has claimed in an article on a legit news site that COVID-19 outbreak is under control and domestic flight services should be immediately restored to normal. It may be tempting to believe the claim without verifying. However, if Dr. X turns out to be not a medical doctor but a doctorate in a completely non-medical field (not qualified) and the CEO of an airline (conflict of interest), take the claims in the article with a massive grain of salt. Further, vet the story by looking at other credible news platforms. If it is true, it will be likely reported by multiple news outlets. If it is false, there is a good chance that it will be fact-checked and debunked by multiple other credible news organizations.

Finally, when in doubt, refer to WHO guidelines on COVID-19 and follow the instructions from the Government. Remember, we are all in this together.

During this time of unprecedented crisis, it will be great not to add extra garbage to the massive vat of existing fake news. Also to think critically and debunk false claims can serve as a fun mental exercise-cum-pastime during isolation. Stay safe. Stay physically and mentally stimulated. As my favourite author Douglas Adams said, Don’t Panic!