To keep students aware on fake news and its prevention, Department of Mass Communication, St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata (SXUK) organized a fact-checking workshop on November 2, 2022 for its postgraduate students.

Mr. Joydeep Das Gupta, Editor, News Sense and a certified trainer from Google News Initiative, India Training Network was the resource person. Citing the need of Internet and its varied uses in modern world, Mr. Das Gupta helped students learn to distinguish between misinformation and disinformation.

He referred to a few examples of clickbait news and narrated about various web based tools of fact-checking which can be accessed easily and help us to check the validity of information. He discussed how an individual can do a reverse image search of a photo and get to know the authenticity of clickbait news.

He suggested to use apps like Google Image Search, TinEye, and Baidu for this. Similarly, a reverse video search can be done to check the authenticity of video like InVid and Frame by Frame. He further emphasised the importance of these apps to combat menace of fake news as a responsible citizen. Students found the hour-long session highly informative.

Dr. Reshmi Naskar