Misinformation glossary

Plain-language explanations of terms used when checking claims, sources and reasoning.

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Evidence and sourcing

Astroturfing: A campaign that makes coordinated promotion look like spontaneous support from ordinary people. Check who is behind a message and whether its sources are independent. Try Source Evaluation Checklist.
Bare assertion: A claim presented without evidence or reasoning to support it. Use the Claim Spotter to find checkable statements that may need sourcing. Try Claim Spotter.
Cherry-picking: Selecting only the evidence that supports a preferred conclusion while leaving out relevant contrary evidence. Compare the full set of data and sources, not just the examples shown. Try Claim Evidence Matrix.
Fabricated attribution: A statement is falsely assigned to a person or organization, or a source is invented. Verify quotations against the original publication or recording. Try Claim Spotter.

False balance: Giving two positions equal weight even when the amount or quality of evidence for them is very different. Look at the evidence and expert consensus, not just the number of voices. Try Claim Spotter.
False dilemma: Presenting two choices as the only possibilities when other options or combinations exist. Ask what alternatives have been left out. Try Logical Fallacy Spotter.
Gish gallop: Overwhelming a discussion with many claims in quick succession, making each difficult to check. Break the argument into individual claims and assess them one at a time. Try Logical Fallacy Spotter.
Motivated reasoning: The tendency to evaluate evidence in ways that favor a conclusion we already want to believe. Try stating what evidence would change your mind before reviewing the sources.
Survivorship bias: Drawing conclusions from the people or cases that remain visible while overlooking those that failed, disappeared or were never counted. Ask what is missing from the sample.

Clickbait: A headline designed to provoke curiosity or emotion, often by exaggerating or withholding key context. Compare the headline with what the article actually establishes. Try Headline Analyzer.
Hedging: Language that qualifies how certain a statement is, such as “may” or “appears to.” It can accurately signal uncertainty, but vague hedges can also make a claim hard to assess. Try Passive Voice & Hedge Detector.
Misleading statistics: Numbers presented without important context such as a baseline, sample size, time period or denominator. The Numbers-in-News Checker can flag some numerical patterns to examine. Try Numbers-in-News Checker.
Weasel words: Vague terms such as “experts say” or “many believe” that imply support without identifying who or how many. Ask for a named source and specific evidence. Try Weasel Word Detector.