DAVID KLEPPER
People are hungry for accurate and reliable information online and may just need help to find it, according to a new media literacy project launched by Microsoft.
The tech company worked with the Trust Project, a nonprofit consortium of news organizations, to create advertisements directing internet users to a list of eight “ trust indicators ” that can be used to assess a website’s credibility. The indicators include things like the clear labeling of opinion pieces, a code of practices and the attribution of sources.
Most people who saw the list expressed greater confidence in their own ability to find reliable news while ferreting out misinformation — a promising finding that suggests media literacy can be a cheap and scalable solution to the daunting problem of online misinformation.
“This was a bit of an experiment for us,” said Ginny Badanes, senior director of Microsoft’s Democracy Forward Initiative, a
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