Since March, BBC journalists have been visiting schools across the country to teach students how to find out fake news. The visits have included up to 1,000 middle and primary schools. They follow a year-long study by BBC. The study found that nearly half of 12 to 15-year-olds find it difficult to tell fact from fiction on social media.

Fake news refers to news stories that you see on TV or the Internet that are partly or completely false. Some of the stories may have some true facts, but still include some lies. Fake news is sometimes created to get clicks and increase profits. Sometimes it is written to get attention or make people think in a certain way.

For example, a nuclear leak at the Fukushima power plant in Japan in 2011 caused an unexpected reaction in China. Fear buying of salt happened in many countries overnight after false news stories saying that iodized salt can protect against radiation. The stories added that sea salt produced in the future might not be safe to eat, as it could be polluted by the leak.

Fake news has had a bad influence on the media industry and society. It may influence public opinion and cause fear or anger. People may also lose trust in the media and become confused about realistic topic and events, BBC said.

Do you know if it’s false? Here are some tips for finding out fake news.

1. Check the information that comes from. Reliable sources include main stream media like CCTV and authoritative organizations like the United Nations.

2. Be careful about headlines. The headlines of fake news stories are often catchy.

3. Check the data. You can probably trust it if the numbers are from a national or international office report.

Technology caused the problem of false news, and it’s easy to think that technology can solve it and that we only need to find the right technology to solve the problem. But this approach ignores valuable lessons concerned with how we acquire knowledge.

To understand how false news comes, start with an example. Imagine you’re out for drinks when one of your friends shocks the table with an unproven story about a local famous people. The story is so shocking you’re not sure it could be right. But then, here’s your good friend, putting their reputation on the line. Maybe you should believe it.

This is an instance of what philosophers call testimony (证词). It’s similar to the sort of testimony given in a courtroom, but it is less formal and much more frequent. Testimony happens any time you believe something because someone else proves the accuracy of the information. Most of our knowledge about the world is secondhand knowledge that comes to us through testimony. After all, we can’t each do all of our own scientific research, or make our own maps of distant cities.

Social media has strange testimonial rules, and it is hard to solve the problem of false news. On Facebook, Twitter and similar platforms, people don’t always mean what they say, and we don’t always expect them to. A the informal Twitter: advertisement goes: “A retweet (转发推文) is not an approval.” When a well-known politician was caught retweeting false statistics about race and crime, he told Fox News it wasn’t a big deal: “Am I gonna check every statistic? All it was is a retweet. It wasn’t from me.” Intellectually (理智上), we know that people do this all of the time on social media, and pass along news without checking its accuracy, but many of us listen to them anyway. The information they share is just too attractive to ignore — especially when it is about our existing political beliefs.

Forced by the COVID﹣19 outbreak， Pooja Chandrashekar spoke to mobile health﹣clinic （卫生所） workers across the city about their needs during the pandemic（大流行病）． The first﹣year Harvard Medical School student discovered that most information about the widespread virus was only available in English and a small number of other languages， leaving those who do not speak those languages in the dark．

"This makes it very difficult for immigrants（外来移民） and non﹣English﹣speaking communities to seek care for COVID﹣19，" Chandrashekar said． "We know from past epidemics like the swine flu（猪流感） that the lack of accessible information in one's native language places these populations at a higher risk of infection．"

She decided to take action， creating the COVID﹣19 Health Literacy Project． Chandrashekar brought together a group of students from more than 30 universities to create fact sheets in languages not commonly represented in the American health care system． She tweeted about her effort on March 14 and included an interest form in a following tweet that collected more than 500 responses． From there， she formed a still﹣growing team of over 175 medical students． Together， the students created seven fact sheets， in 35 languages．

"Our goal is to make sure we're producing accurate， evidence﹣based information，" Chandrashekar said． "When you're putting information out to the public and health care organizations are distributing it to their patients， you really want to make sure the information you're providing is correct．"

Going forward， Chandrashekar plans to keep building the network of partners and expanding the languages offered to serve the greatest number of people．