If you do not live in Serbia and you are hearing about news from Serbia from your local media, you need to read this article. As you probably already know, there is an epidemic or plague of fake news spreading all over the internet. You can thank social media for this.

The problem with social media is that it only takes a click of the “share” button for people to spread erroneous information. Now, bad information has always been with us. This is not a mystery. This is not something new.

What is new, however, is intentionally spreading bad information. Whether we’re talking about propaganda, hoaxes or fake news intended for a commercial purpose, none of these situations are good.

We have to be vigilant. We have to make sure that we are getting the right information and, most importantly, that we are sharing the right factual information.

This is where the challenge lies because a lot of people are very busy. When you are scrolling through your Facebook timeline, you really don’t have the time to read between the lines. You really don’t have the time to scan for the right indicators of reliability and then act accordingly.

Most people see a nice picture, get triggered by the headline, and that’s all it takes for them to click the share button. Unfortunately, that’s all it takes to also make them look like a complete and total fool.

Believe it or not, if you keep sharing fake news, you’re going to look like a person with less than average intelligence to your friends. They might be too polite to let you know to your face, but that’s how they will think. So to save yourself from any obvious or less than obvious embarrassment, let us break down for you how to read global Serbian news.

There’s a lot of misinformation regarding our motherland. You know that, we know that. For a wide variety of reasons, there are certain areas of the world that have a distorted and really unfair view of our motherland. That has always been true in the past, that’s true today, and we suspect that will continue to be the case long into the future.

There’s really nothing we can do about that, but we can stand up to and counteract malicious news spread about the land that we all love. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been living overseas, it doesn’t matter if you are a third or even fourth generation Serbian, if Serbian blood runs through your veins, you are Serbian enough and it deserves your loyalty.

To show your loyalty and to show your love for your ancestral cultural homeland, you need to be vigilant against fake news from global sources.

So how exactly do you read such news? First, look for trigger words or words that are intended to have a negative connotation. There’s a big difference between “telling,” for example, and “dictating.”

There’s a big difference between the economy improving and the economy poised for take off or breaking new grounds. The moment somebody says the word improving, this directs your attention to an earlier state where the economy is not doing all that well. Do you see how this works?

Don’t fall for such lies. There’s been so much misunderstanding about our home country because of the sloppy, careless or unfortunately malicious choice of words.

You might be thinking that there’s really not much difference between “may” and “will,” but there is. Something “may” happen, meaning, that there are a lot of other options out there. There are all sorts of alternative realities that “may” pop up. Things “may” or “may not” happen.

However, when you say the word “will,” it’s a guarantee that something will happen. This is serious as a heart attack. Just as day follows night, “will” involves something that is a prediction.

Be on the lookout for such sneaky use of words when people are talking about news from your homeland. Make sure to write the editor or make sure you post in the comments on Facebook when you see such harmful news being shared to call them out on it.

Our hope is that the more Serbians from all over the world call out fake news regarding Serbia, the more responsible news outlets as well as social media practitioners will be.