Israel-Gaza War: Fake News, Misinformation, Disinformation & How to Spot It | Explained

Over the past fortnight, social media has been flooded with fake videos, photos, articles and posts about the Israel-Gaza War. Experts fear that all of this misinformation and disinformation is not only making it harder to find the truth, but it's also fuelling tensions and hatred, and world leaders are demanding that social media platforms step up.

0:00 Fake News & Misinformation
0:46 The Rise of Fake News
1:32 How to Spot Fake News & Misinformation
1:41 Reliable & Unreliable Sources
2:21 Misleading Content
3:04 Comparing & Fact Checking
4:00 Looking Inward & Confirmation Bias
5:08 Slowing Down

Not only is technology getting better and easier to use, more people are turning to social media for their news and aren't getting their news from trusted organisations. Experts say that recent changes aren’t helping either, like X making cuts related to moderation, and some platforms allowing pretty much anyone to get verified if they're willing to pay for it.

With the problem of misinformation seemingly getting worse, here are 4 things that you should look at before sharing anything online. The first is looking at where the information is coming from.

Accounts without any personal information are obviously a red flag, but if the poster does have personal info, what's their expertise? Do they have a history of posting reliable content? Do they have any potential biases? Who do they actually work for? What is the organisation’s reputation? Who owns it? What agenda or motivations might it have? On an even simpler level,

is the content actually being posted by the organisation that it's claiming to be from? The next thing to look at is the content itself. Check the date. Is it an old article or a video taken out of context? Ask yourself if the content might be manipulated - is it an edited image or a deepfaked voice. Try to read beyond the headline. Is the article stating a fact or is it just repeating a claim made by a certain group or person? And try to think about why the content is being shared and what it's trying to achieve. Something that can help with this is paying attention to the tone and language that’s being used.

Misleading information might use exaggerated language to get your attention, or it might be trying to appeal to your emotions rather than reason to make you feel a certain way.

0:00 Israel-Gaza War & Misinformation

If something is as big of a deal as it seems, it'll appear in multiple places, and if it hasn't yet, maybe there’s uncertainty about the details, or experts haven’t been able to verify all of the facts yet.

An important thing to remember is that misinformation or disinformation isn't always about something being completely false. Some of the most effective disinformation contains slivers of the truth or is completely true but just taken out of context.

It's important to be aware of what your own biases are because people are more likely to fall for misinformation if it tells them what they want to hear. This can be particularly dangerous when it comes to disinformation around something like war because the goal is often to simplify things, so it's us vs them, good vs evil, in a way that can dehumanise the other side. It can feel empowering to be told that you're on the side of the good guys, and at the same time, it can cause people to start dismissing or blocking out any information that challenges that idea, and the more entrenched that people become, they can start to excuse, dismiss, or even justify extreme acts of violence or cruelty.

Looking around at different sources and being open to information that challenges what you believe can help to cut through that, give you a better idea of the full context of what's happening, and make it easier to spot when someone or something is trying to manipulate you.

Before you share something, don't just ask yourself who posted this and why, but why am I sharing this? Am I just helping to push someone else's agenda? And if I can't be sure about what I'm sharing, will it really make that much of a difference to the world around me if I just slow down and wait until I can be sure that what I’m about to post is legitimate and can be trusted. - Nicholas Maher

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[spankmcnasty]

This is an important video. It's just sad that it is needed.

[lachlanbon]

Why didn't you do an educational video like this addressing the misinformation and disinformation in relation to the 'Voice debate' when we needed it?

[pandemicoftheunvaccinated]

Disinformation and misinformation on social media got a massive jump start during the pandemic.

[Celeste-in-Oz]

Posing as legitimate authority really is popular in the 2020s, I mean everyone’s into it. Even governments.

[joelmakes]

Great summary of how to absorb information in this digital age 👌

[satiricgames]

They've never stepped up before. What makes you think they're gonna do it now

[wuenzvf]

Thankyou for you explaining this. It explains to me exactly how my feelings were played on by The Voice from Labor.

[johneller]

The first casualty in war is truth. I've been in a war and it's true.

[Realisticautism]

That guy just exposed how abc and mainstream media do news 😂

[Prfane]

Media literacy is so important these days when people are in a constant rush to do other more crucial daily life things. Short-form content and instant gratification in social media platforms isn't helping much in this case. Most notorious and dangerous example is Tiktok.

[marijanabahun]

Simple solution! Read newspapers, at least you'll have someone to sue! LOL!

[gardener]

Misinformation and disinformation generates engagement and revenue for social media companies, so it isn't in their best interest to stop or limit it.

Self regulation doesn't work when money is involved, we need the world's leaders to hold them to account.

[Willchannel]

Crazy times with fake news, atleast experts come in a big stop.

[HooDie-Trench-GoTh]

So that crow that destroyed the Israeli flag was a payed actor.

[ltuysph]

"....tries to appeal to your emotions", or "Us verses them, or good verses bad"... Ya' mean like the ABC?

[IndiR]

all of this is extremely basic comm0n sense which seems to be in great shortage with this generation and strangely some of the older generations although probably for different reasons. I even actually have family members who are chugging the Kool-Aid . the internet is making us dumb

[CUSTARDPDLETK]

Issue is, BBC themselves, and other media, take everything Hamas says at face value. E.g. the "Gaza Health ministry" sound official and reliable, but its still just HAMAS!

[yassroa]

when the Israeli defence minister comes on TV and say we will cut (Water, Electricity and Food) on Gaza, and the whole world saw it, and nobody denied it, what would be the kind of disinformation that can overcome that?

[veraw]

Surly its not the job of the viewer to have to do all that fack checking it the platform that should be doing it

[torgo_]

the facebook numpties who are taken in my misinformation are never going to see nor understand a video like this