While social media has allowed people from different parts of the globe to connect, it’s also become a depot for misinformation and hoaxes. People often pass on rumors without even the most basic fact-checking. This is the digital equivalent of a whisper over a quick lunch. The Twitter age has also challenged several working journalists as they struggle to keep up with the continuous deadlines of a much larger and more competitive media landscape.

This is an even bigger issue as collaborative journalism and citizen journalism takes off. Today we see non-professional reporting and images being included in mainstream coverage. These can be wrong, and even intentionally faked. News organizations across the world have been misled to cover false news year after year. In today’s day and age, the speed of social media and the volume of user-generated content (UGC) makes fact-checking critical for reporters. Thankfully, several digital tools are available to help journalists and in some cases citizen journalists to check facts digitally.

Here are the top 5 online tools you can use to confirm any news:

This is a verification tool designed to help curate user-generated content during breaking news. It can connect journalists, or any individual to citizen sources on the ground. Checkdesk basically facilitates collaborative fact-checking of unverified reports. That way one can actually join forces with citizen journalists in search of background information and evidence to corroborate social media reports.

Issue with Checkdesk is that you need to download the application on your computer, which is slightly complicated as its Open Source. But for the Techies out there, pls get going!

    This is a free reverse-image search engine. TinEye basically allows you to find out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions exist, or to help find higher-resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine to use image-identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks.

Izitru: This is an extension for Adobe Photoshop. It has a tool called Izitru which analyzes open JPEG images to determine whether they are untouched originals from a digital camera.

Izitru can help identify fake photos, many of which might be run by media organizations. 

Full Fact Finder: This U.K. website covers the economy, health, crime and the law, immigration and education. The unique thing here is that the search results offer users general background information, as well as details on the kind of data available in the area and links to statistics from official bodies. Most details are for the UK, we hope something like this comes up for all countries.

 This is a real-time rumor tracker and is targeted at unverified new bits across the world. This site is part of a research project of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. It focuses on how unverified information and rumor are reported in the media.