Inside The Fake News Fight At Apple, Snapchat, Facebook, And More | Co.Design Since the 2016 presidential election, it’s become clear that fake news could have impacted the result. And social media was its perfect enabler–built for the rapid sharing of articles that aren’t necessarily even read, and designed to validate quack sites with the same design treatment as the New York Times. But everyone makes mistakes. The question now isn’t whether fake news swayed the election. With this in mind, Co.Design spoke to the biggest players in the Valley–including Facebook, Apple, and Reddit–to see what initiatives they’ve launched to counter the spread of misinformation. Google: Fix Search, And Hit Em Where It Hurts–Ad Revenue When I asked Google what it had been doing to curb fake news, the company wrote back with an 800-word list of initiatives. Notably, Google News launched a tab that allows you to filter by fact-checked stories in February. Now, just because a post is flagged doesn’t mean it will stop showing up near the top in search results. WhatsApp: Outright Denial
How “News Literacy” Gets the Web Wrong | Hapgood I have a simple web literacy model. When confronted with a dubious claim: Check for previous fact-checking workGo upstream to the sourceRead laterally That’s it. There’s a couple admonitions in there to check your emotions and think recursively, but these three things — check previous work, go upstream, read laterally — are the core process. We call these things strategies. The reason we present these in sequence in this way is we don’t just want to get students to the truth — we want to get them there as quickly as possible. To give an example, here’s a story from Daily Kos: And here’s what students will say, when confronted with this after years of “close reading” training: Who is this Hunter guy? They might even go to Hunter’s about page and find that the most recent story he has recommended has, well, a very anti-Trump spin on it: They can spend hours on this, going to the site’s about page, reading up on Hunter, looking at the past stories Hunter wrote. Except it doesn’t. 1. 1. Ok. Hmm.
Google Should Be a Librarian, not a Family Feud Contestant | Hapgood I’ve been investigating Google snippets lately, based on some work that other people have done. These are the “cards” that pop up on top sometimes, giving the user what appears to be the “one true answer”. What’s shocking to me is not that Google malfunctions in producing these, but how often it malfunctions, and how easy it is to find malfunctions. It’s like there is little to no quality control on the algorithm at all. Other people have found dozens of these over the past couple days, but here’s a few I found goofing off yesterday while half watching Incorporated on Syfy. Prodded with the right terms, Google will tell you that: Sasha Obama was adoptedLee Harvey Oswald didn’t shoot JFKGMOs make you sick Want some screenshots? Now I’m sure that Google will reply that the results are the results. (By the way, trivia fact: one technique of populist dictatorships is to portray the opposition as simultaneously weak and effete while being all-powerful and brutal. Like this: Like Loading...
Getting Out of the Filter Bubble: Finding The Real You Online I recently had a great (and timely) conversation with one of the counselors from International School Manila at the EARCOS Teacher’s Conference in Kota Kinnabalu, Malaysia (check out all the resources from all of my sessions here). She said: “I wish there was a way to help students recognize what their online profile looks like to other people. They often think what they’re posting is great, but it can be hard for them to view it through someone else’s eyes.” The conversation was great because it’s such an important topic to highlight with students. As teachers, we often talk about thinking before you post, and making good decisions about what you post, but (just like we might avoid dealing with digital confrontation), we don’t always give students time to explore and then reflect on how those good (and sometimes not so good) decisions come together in a digital footprint online. Middle / High School Lesson Idea: Layers of You Grade 3 – 12 Lesson Idea: Search Comparison Going Further Images:
3 Fast, Free Lesson Plans to Fight Fake News The fake news epidemic is disturbing. How do we fight it? Well, we can take a hint from how the medical community fights the flu or any other virus. We inoculate ourselves. In this post, I’ll teach you how I teach about fake news. Just as the flu shot exposes a person to enough of the dead “harmless” virus to cause immunity, we can also expose students to things that have already been verified or shown to be fake. How does a “fake news” lesson flow? First, you ask students to research to see if something is true or not. When students come to class, they get a copy of the bellringer and have a timer (usually 4-5 minutes — there should be some time pressure) set for them to give their recommendations. I’m including screenshots in this post, but if you fill out the form at the bottom, I’ll email you the PDF copy of these three lesson plans. Example #1: Breaking News Bellringer In this case, we share a tweet and some “news sources.” Breaking News Bellringer Answer The Video In Summary
Will we now take information literacy skills seriously? I keep having to bite my tongue a lot late from muttering, "People are idiots." I am sure many are doing the same when they look at me. But there you are. The recent brouhaha over the term "alternate facts" makes it seem like everything people have been reading in the media and online has been true up until Trump was elected president. Librarians have always known better. Any many folks like Mike Eisenberg and Kathy Shrock were way ahead of me in this advocacy. If you'd prefer, read the same message from someone a lot smarter and younger than I am (Jennifer LaGarde) that was just published yesterday. Survival Skills for the Information Jungle: Information Problem-Solving Activities Are More Important Than Ever Creative Classroom August 2001 - Doug Johnson Information jungle survival tipsMost jungles can be confusing and even dangerous to the inexperienced traveler. The vast amount of information available makes research that tries to be exhaustive impossible for nearly every topic.
You are the new gatekeeper of the news News consumers today face a flood of fake news and information. Distinguishing between fact and fiction has become increasingly challenging. In the past, news organizations sifted through information to try to determine its validity and veracity. But that was then. You are part of the problem Now the gatekeeping role that the legacy media newspapers and network television news once played falls to all of us. Journalists no longer decide what goes public. All of it flows through social media streams and into our laptops, tablets and smartphones. It’s not that fake news is new. And it’s not that the old gatekeepers were infallible or consistently apolitical. Some people who use social media check what they publish. Some may think that young people, with their social media savvy, might be better able to assess the information they consume. A Stanford University study found it shocking that many of them couldn’t “evaluate the credibility of that information.” Step up your game #1. #2. #3.
Digital content curation: For students! – Kay Oddone – Medium Originally published on LinkingLearning I’ve been a fan of digital content curation for a long time. I’ve blogged about it on many occasions; first waxing lyrical about Diigo way back in 2011, then celebrating the new year in 2013 by suggesting resolutions to use curation to manage content overload and then reflecting on curation as an art form more recently. So what could I have left to write about, six years after my original post, and is digital content curation even relevant anymore? My previous posts were always focused upon the value of curation for teachers and teacher librarians. Teaching students how to curate digital resources is a meta-skill, that actually requires them to be digitally literate in a number of different ways. The process of digital content curation is a rich teaching opportunity, and involves enough focused teaching for at least one term, but ideally could be spread out, so that it may be taught in context.
The Future of Free Speech, Trolls, Anonymity and Fake News Online Many experts fear uncivil and manipulative behaviors on the internet will persist – and may get worse. This will lead to a splintering of social media into AI-patrolled and regulated ‘safe spaces’ separated from free-for-all zones. Some worry this will hurt the open exchange of ideas and compromise privacy The internet supports a global ecosystem of social interaction. One of the biggest challenges will be finding an appropriate balance between protecting anonymity and enforcing consequences for the abusive behavior that has been allowed to characterize online discussions for far too long.Bailey Poland Since the early 2000s, the wider diffusion of the network, the dawn of Web 2.0 and social media’s increasingly influential impacts, and the maturation of strategic uses of online platforms to influence the public for economic and political gain have altered discourse. Respected internet pundit John Naughton asked in The Guardian, “Has the internet become a failed state?” Bernardo A.
Medium, and The Reason You Can’t Stand the News Anymore. In January, Medium founder Ev Williams announced that despite his company’s efforts to better the news industry, it would refocus. The reason? We believe there are millions of thinking people who want to deepen their understanding of the world and are dissatisfied with what they get from traditional news and their social feeds. We believe that a better system — one that serves people — is possible. In fact, it’s imperative. We are shifting our resources and attention to defining a new model for writers and creators to be rewarded, based on the value they’re creating for people. At its inception, Medium likely thought what many well-intentioned startups and news outlets do. Many have walked this path and many have failed. Companies from Medium to The Washington Post to Mashable to Buzzfeed all eventually run into the same unthinkable truth: The methods used to fund modern journalism simultaneously undermine trust in the news outlets. The Business Model is The Message. An extreme example?
Distraction Is Actually Ruining This Country – Backchannel Yesterday the press got a shocking slap on the wrist. “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” said Steve Bannon, a top Trump advisor. To quote Norm MacDonald, holy crow! But as the surprise wore off, my thinking evolved. In the last week alone, we first became obsessed with fake news, wringing our hands over fictions about protesters getting paid to disrupt the inauguration. Then there’s the real real news, the sorts of things that actually warrant discussion, which this week spewed from the White House as if a sewer line had burst. Too much. Bear with me. As the researchers found, the posts in fact did only one thing: shower praise on all things China. Our internet-addled minds are sitting ducks for a good, solid distraction campaign. I’m not suggesting that the Trump administration is consciously diverting the public from meaningful action by fixating on issues as inane as crowd sizes. Keep your filters on. — Sandra
How to tell fake news from real news In November 2016, Stanford University researchers made an alarming discovery: across the US, many students can’t tell the difference between a reported news article, a persuasive opinion piece, and a corporate ad. This lack of media literacy makes young people vulnerable to getting duped by “fake news” — which can have real consequences. Want to strengthen your own ability to tell real news from fake news? Who wrote it? What claims does it make? When was it published? Where was it published? How does it make you feel? If you get in the habit of asking all 5 of these questions whenever you read a news article, then your basic news literacy skills will start to grow stronger. Laura McClure is an award-winning journalist and the TED-Ed Editor.