You will check five real claims from your feeds or chat groups using lateral reading and image search.
By now you've got two methods. Lesson 6.2 taught lateral reading, and lesson 6.3, Checking images and video, taught reverse image search. This exercise puts them to work on real material. You'll check five claims from your own feeds or chat groups, rate each one, and write a correction you could actually post.
Allow about thirty minutes. Most checks take five minutes or less. One will probably take longer, and that's normal.
Scroll back through your chat groups and social feeds for the past week or two and pick five claims. Choose ones that were shared as fact, and skip the obvious jokes and opinions.
Include at least one image, such as a photo shared as news, and at least one statistic, such as "X per cent of Singaporeans" or "prices have risen by Y". The rest can be anything: a health tip, a rumour about a shop or a policy, a quote attributed to someone, a screenshot of an announcement.
Copy each claim into a table, word for word, with where you saw it and when. Then add columns for the original source, what you checked, your rating, and a note.
For each claim, try to find where it really came from.
For text claims, use lateral reading. Search for the claim and any source it names. If it cites a study, find the study. If it quotes an official, find the statement on the agency's own site. If it names a news outlet, find the article on that outlet's site.
For images, run a reverse image search with at least two tools and note the earliest appearance you can find.
For statistics, find who produced the number and what it actually measured. Numbers drift as they're passed along. "One in three" can start life as "one in three of the 200 people surveyed by a company selling the product".
Write down every source you opened, even the ones that led nowhere. If you can't find an original after a reasonable search, write "could not find". That's a result too.
Use four ratings.
Confirmed means you found the original from a credible source, and it says what the claim says. False means credible sources directly contradict it, or the image is from a different time or place. Misleading means there's something real underneath, but the claim distorts it: a real study stretched beyond what it found, a real quote cut short, a real photo with a wrong caption. Unconfirmed means you couldn't find enough either way.
Misleading is the rating people forget, and it's often the right one. Most viral claims aren't invented from nothing. They're bent.
Here's part of Hafiz's table. The claims are examples.
Claim one: a forwarded message saying a supermarket chain is closing all its branches next month. He searched the chain's name with "closing", checked its official website and social media, and looked at major news sites. Nothing. The chain had posted about a new branch opening the week before. Rating: false.
Claim two: a photo of a long queue outside a clinic captioned "Covid is back, clinics overwhelmed". Google Lens matched it to a news photo from several years earlier. Rating: misleading, since the photo is real but old.
Claim three: "A study shows drinking coffee after 3pm causes insomnia." He found the study, which looked at caffeine close to bedtime, not at 3pm. Rating: misleading.
Claim four: a screenshot of a gov.sg message about a public holiday change. He found the same message on the official gov.sg channel. Rating: confirmed.
Claim five: a quote attributed to a well-known businessman about property prices. He couldn't find it anywhere except in reposts. Rating: unconfirmed.
For any claim you rated false, write a short reply you could post in the group where it appeared. If none were false, write one for a misleading claim.
A good correction is short, polite and specific. It names what's wrong, gives the source, and doesn't make the person who shared it look foolish. People forward things because they care about the group. A correction that embarrasses them makes them defensive, and others stop listening.
Hafiz's draft for the supermarket rumour: "Hi all, I checked on this. There's nothing on the company's website or any news site about closures, and they just opened a new branch last week. Looks like a false rumour, so probably best not to forward."
Keep it in the tone your group uses. A family chat might need a gentler opening than a work group. And write it now even if you decide not to post it, because having the words ready makes it far easier next time.
You've finished when your table has five rows, each with the claim, every source you opened, a rating, and a note on how you reached it, and you have at least one correction drafted in the words you'd actually use.
Start with the claim that made you feel strongest when you first saw it.
Complete a five-row fact-check table with sources and ratings, and draft one polite correction for a group chat.
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