Congratulations to Chloé Bissonnette on her winning entry for the 2026 Haywood Hunt & Associates Inc. Annual Scholarship.
Chloé Bissonnette is a fourth-year University of Ottawa student pursuing an Honours Bachelor’s degree in Conflict Studies and Human Rights. She is committed to the advancement of diplomacy, peace, and human rights, aspiring to study and practice international law. Outside of her studies, she works as a U-Report Ambassador for UNICEF Canada, volunteers as a Political Content Writer for The Modern Impact, and serves as the President of the Conflict Studies and Human Rights Students Association.
This was the 9th year of our scholarship and we’d like to thank everyone who submitted well-researched and well-written essays again this year. Check back soon on the details of our 2026 scholarship!
2026 Scholarship Winning Entry: By Chloé Bissonnette
A few weeks ago, as I was scrolling through my feed, I came across a picture of one of my favourite celebrities at a 2026 World Cup Quarterfinal match. However, while looking at the image, I noticed it looked familiar. A few hours prior, while watching the game, I had seen the same image, only now, the regular fans cheering had been replaced. I scrolled through the comments only to find that hundreds of users had completely fallen for the doctored image.
Today, discerning facts from flukes online has grown increasingly difficult. While many feel they are equipped to discern misleading or false information, research proves that it remains a major challenge. While disinformation (intentionally false information) may be easier to identify, misinformation (accidentally false information) spreads just as quickly and can be harder to locate. The following essay presents the A.L.E.R.T strategy: a five-step method to help users identify misleading or false information shared on social media.
A: Assess the emotion
When trying to locate misleading or false information online, one of the biggest clues can be emotionally charged information. Bold headlines and shocking images can spark strong emotions. When experiencing a strong emotional reaction to information, particularly fear, anger, or excitement, the reader must assess its validity and whether it could be exaggerated or fabricated. A meta study conducted by McLoughlin et al. (2024) demonstrated that users are more likely to share misinformation that provokes outrage over any information from trustworthy sources. Incidentally, limiting the spread of shocking misinformation was complicated by its quick-spreading nature. Other studies by Horner et al. (2022) and Martel et al. (2020) also support this finding, demonstrating that emotional reactions to misinformation lead users to believe it and share it faster than usual.
L: Look for what’s missing
Information that is emotionally charged will frequently also be incomplete. The headline will read something shocking, without revealing the rest of the story. A study by Hameleers (2023) in Communication Theory identifies a few methods used to deliberately spread disinformation online. Notably, they identify decontextualization and manipulation as two of the main methods used to deceive the recipients of the information. Another study by Cazzamatta (2024) found similar results, identifying decontextualization as the most prominent deception strategy in the spread of online misinformation. By removing valuable context, stories can attract greater attention from readers, garnering greater attention and potential for virality. Increasingly, users are invited to follow links or interact with content to gain access to the remainder of the story, further contributing to its spread.
E: Examine the source
When reading information online, always verify the source. Whether it be an influencer, a company account, or a general page, reliable content should always be cited or sourced. While recognizable and popular sources may make mistakes, their content is under greater scrutiny, helping them maintain a positive journalistic reputation. For unknown sources, verifying their reliability should involve looking through the rest of their content, reading through the interactions, and conducting additional research on the author or platform. While validating a source may seem simple, social media has complicated this step. A lot of short-form content and images fail to include their sources, reducing the readers’ ability to scrutinize it.
R: Research elsewhere
Another tool for validating information online is to corroborate the story with several other sources. An article written for Current Opinion in Psychology presents lateral reading as an ideal factchecking method (McGrew, 2024). McGrew’s study finds that individuals trained in lateral reading, no matter the age or level of education, were more effective in identifying misinformation. Lateral reading implies leaving unfamiliar sites, opening new tabs, and searching for information about the site’s sponsoring organization or author via other credible sources (p. 1).
Today, breaking news quickly spreads through media outlets, giving readers the chance to validate the information with several sources. For scientific or historical information, several studies on the same issue are likely to have been conducted with different or similar findings. These can serve as supporting evidence for or against the information at hand. The accessibility of information facilitates lateral reading, making it an easy skill for individuals to develop and maintain.
T: Test the media
As shown by the World Cup Quarterfinal picture, the new capacities of artificial intelligence have facilitated the creation of doctored images and deepfakes. Research conducted by the Netherlands Forensic Institute and the University of Amsterdam listed the following common visible identifiers of AI-generated images and video deepfakes: physical inconsistencies (shadows, perspective lines, reflections), visual artifacts (malformations, context information mismatch), and misarrangement of facial features (similarity between eyes, absence of veins, and environmental reflections) (Lierop et al., 2026, p. 9). While there are several different methods of identifying doctored images, the evolution of AI implies that these are not full proof.
Conclusion
When consuming new information online, readers should use the A.L.E.R.T method to verify its validity: assess the emotion, look for what’s missing, examine the source, research elsewhere, and test the media. High emotional charge, incomplete information, unreliable sources, unique stories, and doctored images or videos are all indicators of false or misleading information.
When looking at the viral image from the World Cup Quarterfinal, users having used the A.L.E.R.T method would have found the information emotionally charged. They would have also found that the source frequently shared other forms of online misinformation and that no other reliable news outlets had shared the same photo. They could also have noticed that the image was doctored due to its lack of shadows, the odd shape of the hands, and the misarrangement of the celebrity’s facial features. Without the A.L.E.R.T method, this photo successfully fooled hundreds of individuals online. What repercussions does this suggest for scientific, medical, historical or political misinformation on a much larger scale?
Bibliography
Cazzamatta, R. (2025). Global misinformation trends: Commonalities and differences in topics, sources of falsehoods, and deception strategies across eight countries. New Media & Society, 27(11), 6334-6358. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241268896
Hameleers, M. (2023). Disinformation as a context-bound phenomenon: toward a conceptual clarification integrating actors, intentions and techniques of creation and dissemination. Communication Theory, 33(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac021
Horner, C. G., Galletta, D., Crawford, J., & Shirsat, A. (2021). Emotions: The Unexplored Fuel of Fake News on Social Media. Journal of Management Information Systems, 38(4), 1039-1066. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2021.1990610
Lierop, S., Najdenkoska, I., Worring, M., & Geradts, Z. (2026). Interpol review of detection of AI-generated image and video deepfakes, 2022-2025. Forensic Science International: Synergy, 13, Article 100704. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2026.100704
Martel, C., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 5(1), Article 47. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00252-3
McGrew, S. (2024). Teaching lateral reading: Interventions to help people read like fact-checkers. Current Opinion in Psychology, 55, Article 101737. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101737
McLoughlin, K. L., Brady, W. J., Goolsbee, A., Kaiser, B., Klonick, K., & Crockett, M. J. (2024). Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online. Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 386(6725), 991-996. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl2829