- Bias: Influenced; inclined in some direction; unduly or unfairly influenced; prejudiced. Check your own bias: read the work of writers who disagree with you.
- Circular reporting: When information appears to come from multiple sources but in fact is only based on one source. Also known as false confirmation, this is how information spreads and becomes truth.
- Post-truth: Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. (Oxford Dictionary's International Word of the Year 2016)
- Click bait: A sensationalized headline or text on the Internet designed to entice people to follow a link to an article on another Web page.
- Confirmation bias: The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. One of the reasons Fake News has taken hold. Also know as the "echo chamber."
- Misinformation: Wrong or misleading information.
- Disinformation: The dissemination of deliberately false information, esp. when supplied by a government or its agent to a foreign power or to the media, with the intention of influencing the policies or opinions of those who receive it; false information so supplied.
- Fake News:
Fake news itself comes in a variety of flavors:
- Pure fake news sites use fabricated stories to lure traffic, encourage clicks (click bait), influence or profit using intentionally deceptive, but highly intriguing, often sensational information.
- Hoax sites also share false information with the intention to trick readers/viewers.
- Satirical sites present news with a comical, often exaggerated spin.
- Born digital images and edited images alter and often misrepresent visual reality.