Introducing This Is Fake, Slate’s tool for stopping fake news on Facebook. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Medioimages/Photodisc. One of the more extreme symptoms of media dysfunction in the past several months has been the ascendance of “fake news”—fabricated news stories that purport to be factual. The phenomenon is not altogether novel, but the scale at which it is now being produced and consumed is unprecedented. A BuzzFeed data analysis found that viral stories falsely claiming that the Pope had endorsed Donald Trump, that Hillary Clinton was implicated in the murder of an FBI agent, that Clinton had sold weapons to ISIS, all received more Facebook engagement than the most popular news stories from established outlets such as the New York Times and CNN.
At a time when trust in the media is at an all-time low and political polarization is intensifying, fake news is hardly the only pox afflicting our democracy. Slate has created a new tool for internet users to identify, debunk, and—most importantly—combat the proliferation of bogus stories. Lesson Idea: Media Literacy and Fake News. Overview: In a world filled with rapid pace communication through a variety of platforms, we have an abundance of information available at our fingertips. Discerning fact from fiction can be complex. Knowing the source can be challenging, and the messages being delivered can be received in different ways, effecting certain populations of people as well as our country.
View the videos in this lesson with your students to cultivate an understanding of media literacy and engage in a discussion about its impact and significance for the future. Procedure: STEP 1. STEP 2. Handout: Media Literacy and Fake News (Google Doc) "Fake News" Sites and Effects on Democracy (4:44) New York Magazine's Max Read discusses his piece examining the rise of “fake news” and whether the internet is a reliable tool for furthering democracy. STEP 3. Lesson Idea: Media Literacy and Fake News. Media literacy courses help high school students spot fake news. Janis Shachter When the AP United States history students at Aragon High School in San Mateo, California, scanned the professionally designed pages of minimumwage.com, most concluded that it was a solid, unbiased source of facts and analysis.
They noted the menu of research reports, graphics and videos, and the “About” page describing the site as a project of a “nonprofit research organization” called the Employment Policies Institute. But then their teacher, Will Colglazier, demonstrated how a couple more exploratory clicks—critically, beyond the site itself—revealed the Employment Policies Institute is considered by the Center for Media and Democracy to be a front group created by lobbyists for the restaurant and hotel industries. “I have some bright students, and a lot of them felt chagrined that they weren’t able to deduce this,” said Colglazier, who videotaped the episode in January. “They got duped.” One student responded loudly, “Fudge nuggets!” Lesson plan: How to teach your students about fake news | Lesson Plan | PBS NewsHour Extra. Fake news is making news, and it’s a problem. Not only did a BuzzFeed data analysis find that viral stories falsely claiming that the Pope endorsed Donald Trump and that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to terrorists receive more Facebook attention than the most popular news stories from established news outlets, but a false story about child trafficking in a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant inspired a North Carolina man to drive 5 hours with a shotgun and other weapons to investigate.
This lesson gives students media literacy skills they need to navigate the media, including how to spot fake news. Subjects Social studies, U.S. government, civics, journalism Estimated Time One 50-minute class Grade Level Introduction A recent study by Stanford University found an overwhelming majority of students were not able to tell the difference between so-called fake news and real news. Procedure Essential question What media literacy skills do students need to evaluate the reliability of a news source? Fake News Antidote: Teaching Kids To Discern Fact From Fiction : NPR Ed. By now, you've probably heard about one very real consequence of fake news — the infamous "pizzagate" conspiracy theory that ended with Edgar Welch, 28, firing a real gun inside a real Washington, D.C., pizzeria filled with real people.
When The New York Times later asked Welch what he thought when he realized there were no child slaves inside the restaurant, as one fake news story had led him to believe, he responded: "The intel on this wasn't 100 percent. " Welch isn't the only one struggling to tell fact from fiction in this digital age. A recent Stanford study found that America's middle, high school and college students are shockingly bad at it, too.
It's clear that something has to change in the nation's classrooms. That something, according to Professor Sam Wineburg, one of those Stanford researchers, is "practice. " And he's right. Many schools — perhaps most — aren't doing nearly enough to help students learn how to sort fact from social-media fiction. "Like a flu in the winter" 10 Ways to Spot a Fake News Article - EasyBib Blog. For many of us, 2016 is going down as a year to forget. Election upsets, Zika, the Syrian crisis, and unfortunately tons of fake news about all of the above and everything in between. Denzel Washington was recently quoted as saying, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” So what should you do? 1. Links and citations allow us to easily access, read, and explore more about the information found in the article.
Many big name news sites, such as CNN, do not include links or citations, but other sites do. 2. An article without an author’s name is another red flag. 3. Do a Google search on the author’s name to find their occupation and locate other articles that the author has composed. 4. On the top or bottom of most websites, you should see a section titled “About Us.” 5. Authors tend to read and re-read their articles numerous times prior to posting. 6. Copy and paste a quote from the article into Google’s search bar. 7. 8. Here’s How Fake News Works (and How the Internet Can Stop It) How to Spot Fake News. Fake news is nothing new. But bogus stories can reach more people more quickly via social media than what good old-fashioned viral emails could accomplish in years past. Concern about the phenomenon led Facebook and Google to announce that they’ll crack down on fake news sites, restricting their ability to garner ad revenue.
Perhaps that could dissipate the amount of malarkey online, though news consumers themselves are the best defense against the spread of misinformation. Not all of the misinformation being passed along online is complete fiction, though some of it is. Snopes.com has been exposing false viral claims since the mid 1990s, whether that’s fabricated messages, distortions containing bits of truth and everything in between. Founder David Mikkelson warned in a Nov. 17 article not to lump everything into the “fake news” category. A lot of these viral claims aren’t “news” at all, but fiction, satire and efforts to fool readers into thinking they’re for real. Check the author. How to Spot Fake News. Video: Spotting Fake News. FactCheck.org - A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center. Rumor has it. A decent breakdown of all things real and fake news. Fake News.
Skip to main content Fake News, Misinformation, and Propaganda This page provides background information, links, and tools from outside organizations to help guide users in navigating potential fake news A Visual Take Library Resources Using library databases is a near-foolproof way to find credible information. News databases: U.S. government information and background: Background Reports from Harvard and other universities: Fake news and the spread of misinformation From the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, links to peer-reviewed articles. NiemanReports: Election '16: Lessons for Journalism From the Nieman Foundation at Harvard; several articles on fake news and news literacy Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning Stanford University study on high school and college students (lack of) news literacy Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content: How News Websites Spread (and Debunk) Online Rumors, Unverified Claims and Misinformation Selected News Articles: Poynter.