Our mission is to inspire curious minds to make a positive impact on history through truthful, often-untold stories of people and events that changed the world. As part of our mission, we're very excited to announce our important new campaign, Honest History Matters.
One of the key tenants of our mission is the word truthful. A recent study found that 80% of children can't distinguish ads and sponsored content from fact-based media! The abundance of information that can be found at the click of a button is overwhelming at best, inaccurate and downright false at worst. And sometimes it can be difficult to discern historical fact from fiction in the variety of sources the Internet offers.
Kids deserve fact-based history, which can be hard to discover when they are bombarded with misinformation. How can we help them spot the difference between truthful and accurate information versus misinformation? Even young kids can start to think about key media-literacy questions, and as kids get older, parents can help them to become more sophisticated and critical thinkers.
That's why we're asking for your help to share this message and #StopGabe—Dishonest Gabe is Honest Abe's twin and loves spreading misinformation and false facts. Where Honest Abe verifies information from many sources and does further research before sharing, Dishonest Gabe spreads misinformation and shares outdated information (like clickbait pieces!).
To help parents and kids alike, we created these two characters to shed light on how to identify misinformation and how to seek out factual information.
Be on the lookout from more from these two, and how they can help us all understand fact from fiction!
And remember, here are a few tips to keep in mind when verifying online sources:
Do a visual assessment:
- When was it published?
- Does the website look reliable and professional?
- What is the domain suffix? (.com; .edu; .gov)
- Are there outlandish or sensational headlines? Is it clickbait?
Analyze sources and quotes:
- Who is the target audience?
- Who is quoted? (Anonymous quotes are never a good sign!)
- Can you cross-reference facts and quotes?
- Who might be paid if you click on a link?
- Is anything left out of this message that may be important?
- Is this credible? (And what makes you this so or otherwise?)