Misinformation spreads in South Carolina after Helene

McBride also said to be wary of posts from national politicians or candidates for political office. With the presidential campaign hitting its final stretch, both candidates might be prone to exaggeration or hyperbole to serve their goals. Instead, defer to your local officials and leaders.

“The more local you can go, the more likely it is you’re getting accurate information,” she said. 

Fifth step: Read laterally, as Mahadevan puts it.

If you see something online that looks questionable, try to corroborate it across multiple outlets. Don’t put all your stock in a single person online. Be sure to check official federal sources like the National Weather Service, or trusted news sources. 

If you see an image that looks like “movie magic,” you should try to find the same event from multiple angles to be sure it’s a recent photo and not generated by artificial intelligence, McBride said.

“This won’t work perfectly,” she said. “I saw that there was a photo of I-40, between Asheville and Knoxville, where a couple of police (cars) were washed out, and there was rumors circulating that it was a fake image and it turned out to be a real image. It was just so unbelievable that people thought for sure it wasn’t real.”

But Mahadevan said, generally, a lot of misinformation can be combatted by being a more active consumer of news. Instead of getting information by scrolling through TikTok, Instagram or Facebook, seek out the news you want.

“Social media newsfeeds have completely made us passive consumers of information,” he said. “So now we’re just kind of passively scrolling. What I always encourage people to do is think more consciously about what you’re consuming.”

But for many residents of the rural parts of South Carolina, finding reliable, local sources of news can be difficult.

News deserts

South Carolina has seen a precipitous decline in local, daily newspapers in recent decades, a trend that can be tied directly to the rise of online misinformation, Mahadevan said. The “information vacuum” created when a local paper folds typically will go unnoticed by many residents until a massive storm or other disaster starts bearing down, he said. Without a local metro paper, people might flock to social media sites like Facebook and NextDoor for information.