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Newer Strategies for verifying Fake News

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Newer Strategies for verifying Fake News

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By Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrandt
Those of us who grew up in a pre-Internet world probably remember passing through grocery store checkout aisles lined with copies of the National Enquirer and other tabloids, with outrageous headlines proclaiming "BAT CHILD FOUND IN CAVE," "HILLARY CLINTON ADOPTS ALIEN BABY," or "DOLPHIN GROWS HUMAN ARMS." Even as children, it was easy to distinguish those fake stories from real news, not just because of the sensational claims but also because of the telltale fonts and the obviously manipulated or fabricated images. Looking back, the division between fake news and authentic journalism seemed quite clear.

In today's world, however, the line between real and fake seems increasingly blurred and uncertain. False stories are no longer relegated to tabloid publications but instead have infiltrated more mainstream media sources and social networking services. While the ludicrous claims of tabloid fare were meant mostly to entertain, today's fake news is a more insidious specimen; in many cases, there is a sinister intent to its creation and dissemination. Indeed, the dictionary.com definition of fake news reads: "false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared online for the purpose of generating ad revenue via web traffic or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company, etc " [emphasis added].

For many of us, the rise of fake news has become inextricably linked to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Data now shows that in the lead-up to election day, the top twenty fake news stories outperformed the top twenty mainstream (legitimate) new stories on Facebook, with the former netting about 1.4 million more engagements (shares, reactions, and comments) than the latter. And the creation and spread of the plethora of fake news stories was undeniably intentional; for example, reports emerged after the election about a small town in Macedonia in which a number of teens specialized in creating false, pro-Trump news articles for the purpose of generating ad revenue. Interestingly, the teens were not necessarily Trump supporters but rather had discovered that disseminating these articles was highly lucrative (earning tens of thousands of dollars in a country where the average monthly salary is $371 USD). While the Internet has often been touted as a democratizing force where all voices can be heard, clearly there are both benefits and drawbacks to a world when anyone can publish anything.

Fake News in a Digital World

Why is fake news so much harder to deal with today? One of the major changes is the prevalence of easily accessible digital tools that allow anyone to create realistic but false messages, videos, and voice recordings. For instance, in the last year, a human image synthesis technique called DeepFakes has gained infamy online; the technique uses Deep Learning (artificial intelligence) algorithms to find patterns in facial photographs in order to add someone's face to an unrelated video. While the technique is fairly new, there has been great fear about the potential misuse of the technology for the use of fake political messages or revenge porn.

As well, there are new tools on the horizon that threaten to further complicate our ability to judge what is real and what is fake. For instance, Voco, an experimental tool from Adobe, has been touted as "Photoshop for voice;" if released, the tool would enable the use of existing voice samples to copy anyone's voiceprint in order to create new messages. Additionally, in recent weeks Google demonstrated the Assistant feature at a conference, illustrated how the soon-to-be-introduced technology would allow personal bots to communicate fluently with others over voice using artificial intelligence. It is not difficult to envision myriad ways in which these new technologies could be misused in order to trick or mislead unsuspecting audiences.

Thus, while fake news is certainly not new, and there have long been mechanisms for creating deceptive and misleading artefacts, we are now entering a brave new world where the truth is more and more difficult to uncover. Thanks to sophisticated tools, the deeply ingrained maxim that "seeing is believing" has become a liability; instead, we have entered an era in which fake news has truly become an information validation problem that will require new strategies for discerning what is real. Moreover, this challenge is only exacerbated by the sheer volume of information (both true and false) being circulated. Indeed, Garry Kasparov, the chess Grandmaster and political activist, notes, "The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth."

Why Don't Our Traditional Strategies Work Anymore?

For many years, we have relied on checklists in order to determine the quality of online information. Most of these checklists take the form of an acronym; for instance, three commonly used tools for evaluating information are RADCAP, CRAAP, and CARS. Unfortunately, these tools are no longer adequate for navigating the current media landscape. On a basic level, using a checklist to deal with the sheer abundance of information available is simply not practical; as Mike Caulfield notes, "In reality, most literacies are heavily domain-dependent, and based not on skills." In other words, it's no longer enough to know how to check the date on an article or search for the name of the author; instead, in a world where every piece of information is suspect and potentially falsified, we need to be able to apply web-specific knowledge, such as understanding the implicit biases of various news sites or knowing which fact-checking sites are trustworthy.

Simply put, the checklist models are no match for the sophistication of today's fake news - they were designed with a simpler media landscape in mind. If we take the idea of authorship (also referred to as authority or credibility), for example, we can easily see where these models break down. The checklists would suggest that we can evaluate a piece of media by looking at its origin. However, the authorship of an artefact can easily be falsified; on social networking sites, for instance, we have seen how both bots and paid "trolls" can masquerade as "reliable" sources in order to spread false information and then amplify it through (bot- and troll-generated) shares and retweets. (For a deeper analysis of the shortcomings of checklist models, see Caulfield's site.) As well, in our current political era, legitimate authorship is no guarantee; for example, a checklist model would likely give a U.S. president a pass on credibility, but President Trump is known to have spread falsehood both online and off (so much so that Politifact has compiled a lengthy list of the false statements he has uttered). And in the Canadian context, on the other side of the political spectrum, sites like TrudeauMeter take on a similar, non-partisan function in assessing the Prime Minister's performance related to election promises. Complications around the very concept of authority, and the notion that authority equates to credibility, make it impossible to use un-nuanced checklists in order to assess the truth.

New Strategies and Techniques for Dealing with Fake News

Given the shortcomings of existing tools for evaluating information, we've compiled a few suggestions for dealing with today's fake news.

1. Develop and employ investigative techniques: Rather than relying on a checklist, it's important that we develop the capacity to employ more sophisticated techniques and strategies when assessing information. These techniques include:

Knowing about and using available web tools - There are multiple tools and sites that are available to help deal with false information, and an important part of tackling the issue of fake news is to be aware of these resources. For instance, it's helpful to know about reliable fact checking sites such as Snopes, Politifact, and FactCheck.org. These sites assess news stories and claims that are circulating and then rate each one for accuracy. Another helpful tool is Google's reverse image search, which allows you to search for a picture to determine where the image originally appeared and whether it has been altered. As well, VerificationHandbook.com is an excellent source of information that details how to verify particular types of media including images and video.

Reading like a fact checker: It's also important to understand how professional fact checkers read and evaluate online sources, in order to emulate their strategies. A 2017 study observed 45 individuals (10 PhD historians, 10 professional fact checkers, and 25 Stanford undergraduate students) as they evaluated live websites. The researchers found that both the historians and the students were easily influenced by false elements of websites, including logos and domain names (both of which are easily manipulated). Importantly, these individuals employed the practice of reading "vertically," that is, staying on the same site in order to assess it. On the other hand, the professional fact checkers read "laterally," meaning that instead of evaluating the site itself, they searched outside sources for corroboration. This is a key technique for evaluating sources, especially given the many strategies and tools available for generating a scaffolding of falsified supports around any given fake site or article.

Understanding and identifying biases: Finally, it's important to learn how to read critically in order to assess the biases of particular sources. This is sometimes a matter of knowing which resources are available to help determine biases; for instance, this chart does an excellent job of laying out the media landscape according to political leaning and general reliability of reporting.

2. Use rich examples: When it comes to helping others understand the complexities of fake news and how to deal with this important issues, it can be very helpful to use rich, real-life examples of falsified stories or images. Of course, there are many pre-fabricated examples of fake artefacts, and over the years, we've seen teachers making great use of "fake sites" designed to help students develop information literacies/skills, including DHMO.org, Save the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, Feline reactions to bearded men, and BuyDehydratedWater. But while these are still great resources that can be used with some success, given the abundance of fake news and internet scams that inundate our digital society, there are plenty of opportunities to use fresh and authentic examples in class.

For instance, take this image of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, purportedly standing next to a woman wearing an "I'm with stupid" t-shirt that points to Clinton. The image circulated on Facebook in July of 2015, with the criticism that Clinton was "too into herself to notice a t-shirt." As an activity, we might try to use the techniques listed above to determine whether the photo is legitimate. In this case, we could use the aforementioned Google reverse image search to find the original photo, which would quickly tell us that earlier versions of the photo included a plain white t-shirt without writing on it. A reverse image search would also lead us to the Snopes page dedicated to the image, which provides additional details about the spread of the hoax. In today's fake news world, similar examples are readily available for use as authentic case studies.

3. Nurture a Critical Disposition: Ernest Hemingway once remarked that "the most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, s*** detector;" in today's fake news world, the ability to detect lies and nonsense is essential not just for writers but for readers as well. For better or for worse, however, we humans often seem inclined to believe what we see, hear, and read. As such, a third key strategy for dealing with fake news is the development of a critical disposition. Essentially, one of the key challenges of the current age is the need to retrain ourselves to look at the world with an attitude that demands that we question everything, not so that we are paralyzed by uncertainty but so that we are liberated, freed from a world of mistruths and able to assess "reality" in order to create a more accurate picture of the world than the one that is being presented.

Alec Couros is a Professor of educational technology and media at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina. He has given hundreds of workshops and presentations, nationally and internationally, on topics such as openness in education, networked learning, social media in education, digital citizenship, and critical media literacy. His graduate and undergraduate courses help current and future educators understand how to use and take advantage of the educational potential offered by the tools of connectivity.

Katia Hildebrandt is a Ph.D. candidate and instructor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina. Her doctoral research is in the area of social media and anti-oppressive education. A former middle years and high school educator, Katia now teaches undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of curriculum, pedagogy, and educational technology.

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Developing Critical Literacies: What We Need to Know in a "Fake News" World

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By Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrandt Those of us who grew up in a pre-Internet world probably remember passing through grocery store checkout aisles lined with copies of the National Enquirer and other tabloids, with outrageous headlines proclaiming "BAT CHILD FOUND IN CAVE," "HILLARY CLINTON ADOPTS ALIEN BABY," or "DOLPHIN GROWS HUMAN ARMS." Even as children, it was easy to distinguish those fake stories from real news, not just because of the sensational claims but also because of the telltale fonts and the obviously manipulated or fabricated images.

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Why Checklist Approaches to Information Literacy Fail and What To Do About It

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Why Checklist Approaches to Information Literacy Fail and What To Do About It

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#gamechanger

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William Paterson University LibGuide: Fake News

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LibGuides: Fake News: Teaching Resources

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Resources to help teach K-12 students about fake news.

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If you read any news story in the past 15 months about fake news, then you likely also saw a reference to media literacy. There is a tremendous interest now in providing teachers with media literacy training and students with media literacy skills, and I have been conducting media literacy professional development for 20 years.

Those news stories that called for media literacy education were referring to students' abilities to question, analyze and evaluate what they consume from the news.

In reality, media literacy is much more than just that. Media literacy is critical thinking about media messages -- including everything from propaganda to photos to advertising, social media and videos. For more than 20 years, the National Council for Teachers of English has recommended media literacy to its members. NCTE is not alone. In 2016, the National Council for the Social Studies passed a revised resolution on media literacy. The Partnership for 21 st Century Skills, as well as the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards -- among many others -- are also on board with media literacy recommendations.

The Common Core teaching standards offer a few ideas when it comes to media literacy, but those standards are still confined to print media, when, in reality, our students are already part of the media generation and are thereby exposed to more messages in media than in print. Shouldn't we be teaching them how to close read the media too?

I have to acknowledge here that many educators are not comfortable with popular culture and don't understand how bringing it into the classroom can be the catalyst to meeting teaching standards. For the most part, many educators have never received one minute of media literacy training, so they're ill prepared to teach it. Every educator who uses images and video in instruction needs to have background in media literacy. Unfortunately, they do not.

In my talks to educators, I compare media literacy to a tree with two branches. One branch is analysis of media messages, while the other branch is creating media. Yes, our students need to have experience in both analyzing and producing their own media. In many schools, we're already allowing student to use cellphones or iPads to shoot and edit photos and video. In many ways our students are already broadcasters and filmmakers, even though they've had no formal training. That alone is media production, but it is not media literacy.

For the past two years, I have been blogging about media literacy in K-12. In those blogs, I look at popular culture and current events and suggest concrete ways for educators to feel comfortable bringing them into the classroom. For example, in the fall, I usually write about the powerful persuasion in TV toy commercials around the holidays. After the first of the year, I urge educators to consider using Super Bowl ads to teach argument.

I'd like to suggest to everyone reading this column: Go look at your school library's collection. Does it include any books about photography, advertising, movies and television? Acquiring titles that match your student's interests is a smart way to get started.

Another recommendation would be to consider the type of media literacy training each of teacher needs. If a teacher doesn't get the necessary training, he or she won't be prepared to tackle media.It's not too late to begin charting your district or school's path to effective media literacy education.
Frank Baker maintains the nationally recognized Media Literacy Clearinghouse. He is the author of "Close reading the media" and "Media literacy in the K-12 classroom." He invites educators to follow him on Facebook and on Twitter at @fbaker. He can be reached via email at fbaker1346@gmail.com.

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If you read any news story in the past 15 months about fake news, then you likely also saw a reference to media literacy. There is a tremendous interest now in providing teachers with media literacy training and students with media literacy skills, and I have been conducting media literacy professional development for 20 years.

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10 Question Quiz to See If You've Been Fooled

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Fake News Frenzy of 2017

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Fake News Frenzy of 2017

There were some days in the past year when I felt the whole "Fake News" phenomenon was overworked in our profession. However, I tripped over an article in ProQuest that made me think about writing and research from a journalist's perspective. The article " Flipside of Fake News ... Responsible Journalism " explores the ever-changing news literacy landscape.

Wanting to know more about the journalist's perspective and the training of future journalists I contacted Dr. Robert Byrd, a professor in the Department of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis and he was kind enough to respond to my request for an interview. Below is the transcript of our interview. At the conclusion of the interview, Dr. Byrd includes specific resources for K-12 librarians and teachers to teach students about news media. I hope you find the resources and insights as helpful as I found them.

Hallmarks of Responsible Journalism

HANNAH BYRD LITTLE: As a professor of journalism, what are the hallmarks of responsible journalism and how can the reader spot these very specific things?

DR. ROBERT BYRD: The first principle in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics is "seek truth and report it." That's what journalism is all about. Journalists abide by these codes of ethics every day, but sometimes that means they may report on something that others may not want to hear. Sometimes the truth is ugly, or it puts someone on the hot seat. But we as journalists still have a public duty to publish that information.

Sometimes a reader's issue with spotting high-quality news over the shoddy news is his or her own biases. News shouldn't be disregarded just because we don't want to believe it to be true. Readers should disregard news after some fact checking of their own. The first thing anyone should do after reading, watching, or listening to a news story is Google. Can they confirm the story with at least two other sources? Are there other sources that refute the story?

So much of the fake news from the last couple of years was just outright fake-totally made up. Photos were ripped from other stories, information was fabricated, sources were created out of thin air. That's completely different from real, journalistic news. And so easy to spot.

For readers, they should be looking for actual news outlets. Do some research on the outlets that you're using so that you know the vast majority of what they produce is accurate and balanced. Readers should also look at sourcing. Most journalists strive to only include verifiable information from credible sources. Information that can be confirmed by other sources. Most journalists rely on data produced by non-partisan researchers. Journalists, according to the SPJ code of ethics, should be accountable and transparent, meaning we know their sources and they are standing by their work.

The problem with a lot of the fake news or fictional stories that are produced is that they were made to look like real news. Those stories weren't produced by actual journalists. Those stories were and are produced by non-journalists with an agenda. There was a really good story in the New York Times about the guy who fabricated the story about Hillary Clinton stealing ballots and hiding them in a storage container in Chicago. It's an interesting read-fascinating and scary.

It all comes down to: If it sounds wrong, fact check it. If you don't know the source, find other sources to refute or confirm. Even if it's been shared 500,000 times on Facebook and your best friend posted it, investigate.

Future of Print News

LITTLE: What do you teach about the future of print news?

BYRD: For the last 15 years, print news has been dying-or at least that's the popular narrative. Is print news what it used to be? No. Will it be the same again? Probably not.

But we have seen an uptick in print news consumption since 2016. That probably has more to do with our political environment than anything.

What I tell my students about journalism and journalism education is that no one lives in a silo. You have to diversify. Journalists now have to be researchers, writers, photographers, videographers, designers, editors...the list really can go on and on. We teach few classes now that focus solely on writing-just because we know our students won't just write. Even with that being said, the values and tenants of print journalism still live on. Our students are taught those values just like journalists have been for the last century.

Print journalism will most likely always be around. It just won't look like it did in previous years. But the newspaper and print journalism has seen so many evolutions and changes in American history. With every new communication technology in our history, the newspaper adapts. It looks different, but it's still there.

Intrigue without Compromising Accuracy

LITTLE: How do you teach students to be intriguing at the same time differentiating themselves from online sources that are either extremely biased or are titillating click-bait?

BYRD: This is a great question. One that we often talk about in journalism classes. How to write a headline that grabs attention, but isn't sensational or misleading. Headline writing is an art. To be really good takes time and practice. Headlines are active, have keywords, tease the story without being sensational or salacious, give the reader an idea of the story before they click.

I don't always think this is really the problem of journalists-they're well-trained. This is the work of media corporations. The more sensational, the more clicks, the more advertising dollars. This also isn't a new problem. Media history is filled with these kinds of sensational headlines that titillate readers but offer little in the way of public good.

I don't know that we can change the corporate mentality. I think this is a reader education moment. If we can educate readers to avoid headlines like this, the clicks reduce and so do the profits from stories like this. Also, we have to train readers to read beyond the headline. There's a ridiculous amount of readers who only skim headlines for news and information-that's scary given some of the headlines out there.

Tools for K-12 Teachers and Librarians

LITTLE: What tools can K-12 teachers and librarians use in their teaching to help students spot sloppy journalism and inaccurate news?

BYRD: Great question.

I think media literacy should be a part of a K-12 curriculum. Students need to learn early on how media works-not just news, but advertising, public relations, and film and television as well. That curriculum could be taught in a dedicated class or as part of social studies or media studies, but it definitely should be included.

For librarians and teachers, there are some good resources out there to teach students about the media.

The New York Times has a teaching and learning site that offers lesson plans on almost any subject, but their news and information topics are great. One lesson explores the subject we've been talking about here-spotting fake news.

NIE (Newspapers in Education) is a great resource as well. A few of the national newspapers have dedicated NIE sites that help students to understand and dissect what it is they're reading in the newspaper. The Washington Post has an NIE site that's great.

PBS also offers lessons plans that coincide with PBS Newshour. Great for students to watch the programming, then learn more about the stories and the production. Also, great for teachers because the lesson plans are designed for varying grade levels.

Finally, I would say for all K-12 teachers and librarians, it is important that they educate themselves on the media as well. It's easy for all of to fall prey to political rhetoric that demonizes the media, but our democracy is reliant on a strong, independent media. If we kill it because we've been duped into believing that it's evil and fake, we're most likely creating a society where the lines between fact and fiction are more and more distorted.

Works Consulted in this article.

Categories: Blog Topics, Student Engagement/ Teaching Models, Technology

Tags: bias, Code of Ethics, Digital Newspaper, Fake news, journalism, news literacy, print versus electronic media, Society of Professional Journalists

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There were some days in the past year when I felt the whole "Fake News" phenomenon was overworked in our profession. However, I tripped over an article in ProQuest that made me think about writing and research from a journalist's perspective. The article " Flipside of Fake News ...

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News & Media Literacy Curriculum for grades K-12

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News & Media Literacy Curriculum for grades K-12

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Deceptive Detective Poster for elementary school

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Deceptive Detective Poster for elementary school

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Legit-O-Meter Classroom Poster For high school

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Legit-O-Meter Classroom Poster For high school

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Why ‘Media Literacy’ Doesn’t Stand a Chance

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Why ‘Media Literacy’ Doesn’t Stand a Chance

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The social-media researcher danah boyd says the forces that espouse racial extremism, anti-democratic messages, and lies about so-called crisis actors are adept at exploiting the internet, while educators and journalists still struggle to puncture their propaganda. This segment is part of a special series of video highlights from SXSWedu, produced by The Chronicle.
Goldie Blumenstyk writes about the intersection of business and higher education. Check out www.goldieblumenstyk.com for information on her book about the higher-education crisis; follow her on Twitter @GoldieStandard; or email her at goldie@chronicle.com.

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Why 'Media Literacy' Doesn't Stand a Chance

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The social-media researcher danah boyd says the forces that espouse racial extremism, anti-democratic messages, and lies about so-called crisis actors are adept at exploiting the internet, while educators and journalists still struggle to puncture their propaganda. This segment is part of a special series of video highlights from SXSWedu, produced by The Chronicle.

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We share evidence and practitioner-based learning strategies that empower you to improve K-12 education.

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Analyze Media Understand both how and why media messages are constructed, and for what purposes Examine how individuals interpret messages differently,

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Skip to main content

The internet is an amazing tool for teaching and learning. But, before we can teach students to harness its power and become good citizens of the web, we need to understand the intricacies of how it works and how it can be manipulated to mislead and even harm users.
Learning the Landscape of Digital Literacy

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Digital and Civic Literacy Skills The internet is an amazing tool for teaching and learning. But, before we can teach students to harness its power and become good citizens of the web, we need to understand the intricacies of how it works and how it can be manipulated to mislead and even harm users.

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Putting Words in Someone's Mouth Using AI

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Putting Words in Someone's Mouth Using AI

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A video produced by BuzzFeed has highlighted the growing problem of DeepFake videos, as it becomes easier than ever to make celebrities appear to say and do anything.

In the video, Barack Obama appears to say some rather un-Obama things, such as Ben Carson being "in the sunken place" or Trump being a "total and complete dipshit".

"We're entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time even if they would never say those things," the Obama in the video says.

However, it's of course not Obama at all, but rather the actor Jordan Peele (of Key and Peele fame) providing the voice. Obama's face, meanwhile, has been merged with the lips of Peele by a tool known as FakeApp.

BuzzFeed noted that it took 56 hours to produce the video with the help of a video effects professional, so it is not quite in the hands of everyone just yet. But they noted that it is likely to get easier and cheaper in the future.

"[T]he good news is it still requires a decent amount of skill, processing power, and time to create a really good 'deepfake,'" they said.

"The bad news is that the lesson of computers and technology is this stuff will get easier, cheaper, and more ubiquitous faster than you would expect - or be ready for."

DeepFake videos have come to the fore lately, notably at the end of 2017 when porn videos with celebrities started popping up on the Internet. And earlier this year, experts warned that DeepFakes could be used to influence politics in the future.

"The idea that someone could put another person's face on an individual's body, that would be like a home run for anyone who wants to interfere in a political process," Virginia Senator Mark Warner told CBS.

"This is now going to be the new reality, surely by 2020, but potentially as early as this year."

And this Obama video highlights that, while the technology is still fairly complex, it is getting both easier and better. Remember that if something you watch seems unbelievable, well, it just might be.

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This 'Obama' Video Should Absolutely Terrify You

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A video produced by BuzzFeed has highlighted the growing problem of DeepFake videos, as it becomes easier than ever to make celebrities appear to say and do anything. In the video, Barack Obama appears to say some rather un-Obama things, such as Ben Carson being "in the sunken place" or Trump being a "total and complete dipshit".

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Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Reasoning

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Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Reasoning

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Executive Summary

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5 C's of Evaluation

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Helping Students Identify Fake News with the Five C's of Critical Consuming

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Symbaloo

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Lesson plans and other resources for librarians

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The International Fact-Checking Network is a unit of the Poynter Institute dedicated to bringing together fact-checkers worldwide. The IFCN was launched in September 2015 to support a booming crop of fact-checking initiatives by promoting best practices and exchanges in this field.

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An educator's guide to the week in news literacy including lesson ideas & discussion. Very current, great suggestions. Consider subscribing, link to past issues below.

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Videos and lessons for Middle School

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Media educators base their teaching on key concepts of media literacy, which provide an effective foundation for examining mass media and popular culture. These key concepts act as filters that any media text has to go through in order for us to respond.

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Cool Tools for Schools Thing 14: News Literacy

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Cool Tools for Schools Thing 14: News Literacy

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One of the reasons our students find and use news that is less than credible is that their news habits are less than energetic.

Among the ten key trends Pew researchers gathered from among their research reports on social and news media were:

Use of mobile devices for news continues to grow.

Two-thirds of Americans (67%) get at least some news on social media.

Social media and direct visits to news organizations' websites are the most common pathways to online news.

Online news that comes via emails and texts from friends or family is the type of news encounter most likely to result in a follow-up action.

So, let's work with the data to improve access, quality, and literacy.

I don't think it's hard for us to work with K12 students to develop habits that allow them to more easily discover news and to develop habits that may be just a little smarter than those of the average bear.

The easiest way to address the issues is to ensure that the news they find on their mobile devices or desktops is rich and varied.

1. Curate: When I worked in the high school, my LibGuides pointed to news sources from all over the world, from all media-print, broadcast, digital, database, social media-and from western and non-Western sources.

I worked with my students to set up alerts in Google and for the database searches that most interested them and I shared how they might set up and leverage the power of RSS readers like Feedly and Feedster available for desktop and as apps.

You could also curate, of course, with a tool like the New Google Sites, that now allows for easier embedding of widgets and feeds.

But, how did I find these resources and feeds to subscribe to and embed?

I made some of my best discoveries exploiting the news and current event resources gathered by other librarians in the very searchable LibGuide Community.

I exploited news portals like:

Newseum: The interactive Washington, DC museum, is dedicated to the First Amendment. One of its many services is its daily curation of 2000 global newspaper Today's Front Pages, available in Gallery, List, or Map views. Users are also able to browse a rich archive for dates of historical significance.

Newseum is also available for iOS and Android, offering hundreds of daily front pages, the ability to create lists of favorites, and locate newspapers by name, place or map views.

The About page shares:

We believe that you can only get the full story by consulting multiple sources. We hope our outstanding collection of hand-selected sources will offer you a stronger, more satisfying and more reliable understanding of the news than any single source. Our goal is to send you to the strongest media for a subject, industry or region in the least amount of time so that you can spend less time searching for the news and more time making sense of it.

This has been a go-to spot for me for years. Take a look at just some of the news goodies listed:

The Paperboy: What began as a hobby for Ian in November 1997, has turned into a huge and hugely useful portal linking us (and creating side-by-side comparisons) to major news outlets' Twitter feeds, as well as a Clickable Map of World Newspapers by City, To p 10 US Newspapers, Top 100 US Newspapers List by Circulation, Top 100 Newspapers Listed by State and World Newspapers Listed by Country and images/previews of those World Newspapers' Front Pages. The Paperboy also offers an Android App and is offered as a Mobile version.

Allsides: I blogged about Allsides several months ago. The site functions as a search tool and a filter bubble burster, curating and identifying perspective in news stories. The Allsides Balanced Search box is well-worth including on your websites and Guides.

2. Help learners curate: What is your own go-to site for curation? For me, it's LibGuides and Pearltrees these days. In around 15 minutes, I was able to pull together this Pearltrees curation that I imagine might be easily personalized by kiddos using most any curation platform. In some ways this approach is more attractive than the traditional (often crowded and texty) RSS feed reader.

3. Push a few good apps: Wouldn't it be great if your students checked their phones to discover news from multiple sources, media, and places based on their own selections? I mentioned a few apps offered by the websites above AND you are going to want to investigate and introduce this one:

Swiipe: News That Knows You: This Tinder-inspired approach to global news
was created by Alex Goodison, an Irish teen who built the app during a summer vacation. Users chose from among 60 sources in a variety of categories to discover news from around the world and to develop a personalized feed. Swiipe left to delete a story, right to read, save, share. A new feature alerts users of trending news from the past 48 hours.

Of course, there's the danger of the user honing his or her feed so precisely that they develop a little Swiipe filter bubble. Alas, that is fodder for yet another conversation.

Pew Research Center. "Key trends in social and digital news media." 4 Oct. 2017. http://pewrsr.ch/2hOcAow

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News literacy tools: Advice, four sites and a new app (Swiipe)

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One of the reasons our students find and use news that is less than credible is that their news habits are less than energetic. Among the ten key trends Pew researchers gathered from among their research reports on social and news media were: Use of mobile devices for news continues to grow.

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The fake news hit Trent, Italy, on Easter Sunday, 1475. A 2 ½-year-old child named Simonino had gone missing, and a Franciscan preacher, Bernardino da Feltre, gave a series of sermons claiming that the Jewish community had murdered the child, drained his blood and drunk it to celebrate Passover. The rumors spread fast. Before long da Feltre was claiming that the boy's body had been found in the basement of a Jewish house. In response, the Prince-Bishop of Trent Johannes IV Hinderbach immediately ordered the city's entire Jewish communityarrested and tortured. Fifteen of them were found guilty and burned at the stake. The story inspired surrounding communities to commit similar atrocities.

Recognizing a false story, the papacy intervened and attempted to stop both the story and the murders. But Hinderbach refused to meet the papal legate, and feeling threatened, simply spread more fake news stories about Jews drinking the blood of Christian children. In the end, the popular fervor supporting these anti-semitic "blood libel" stories made it impossible for the papacy to interfere with Hinderbach, who had Simonino canonized-Saint Simon-and attributed to him a hundred miracles. Today, historians have catalogued the fake stories of child-murdering, blood-drinking Jews, which have existed since the 12th century as part of thefoundation of anti-Semitism. And yet, one anti-Semitic website still claims the story is true and Simon is still a martyred saint. Some fake news never dies.

Story Continued Below

Over the past few months, "fake news" has been on the loose once again. From bogus stories about Hillary Clinton's imminent indictment to myths about a postal worker in Ohio destroying absentee ballots cast for Donald Trump, colorful and damagingtales have begun to circulate rapidly and widely on Twitter and Facebook. In some cases they have had violent results: Earlier this month a man armed with an AR-15 fired a shot inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant, claiming to be investigating (fake) reports that Clinton aide John Podesta was heading up a child abuse ring there.

But amid all the media handwringing about fake news and how to deal with it, one fact seems to have gotten lost: Fake news is not a new phenomenon. It has been around since news became a concept 500 years ago with the invention of print-a lot longer, in fact, than verified, "objective" news, which emerged in forcea little more than a century ago. From the start, fake news has tended to be sensationalist and extreme, designed to inflame passions and prejudices. And it has often provoked violence. The Nazi propaganda machine relied on the same sorts of fake stories about ritual Jewish drinking of childrens' blood that inspired Prince-Bishop Hinderbach in the 15th century. Perhaps most dangerous is how terrifyingly persistent and powerful fake news has proved to be. As Pope Sixtus IV found out, wild fake stories with roots in popular prejudice often prove too much for responsible authorities to handle. With the decline of trusted news establishments around the country, who's to stop them today?

***

Fake news took off at the same time that news began to circulate widely, after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439. "Real" news was hard to verify in that era. There were plenty of news sources-from official publications by political and religious authorities, to eyewitness accounts from sailors and merchants-but no concept of journalistic ethics or objectivity. Readers in search of fact had to pay close attention. In the 16th century, those who wanted real news believed that leaked secret government reports were reliable sources, such as Venetian government correspondence, known as relazioni. But it wasn't long before leaked original documents were soon followed by fake relazioni leaks. By the 17th century, historians began to play a role in verifying the news by publishing their sources as verifiable footnotes. The trial over Galileo's findings in 1610 also created a desire for scientifically verifiable news and helped create influential scholarly news sources.

But as printing expanded, so flowed fake news, from spectacular stories of sea monsters and witches to claims that sinners were responsible for natural disasters. The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 was one of the more complex news stories of all time, with the church and many European authorities blaming the natural disaster on divine retribution against sinners. An entire genre of fake news pamphlets ( relações de sucessos) emerged in Portugal, claiming that some survivors owed their lives to an apparition of the Virgin Mary. These religiously inspired accounts of the earthquake sparked the famed Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire to attack religious explanations of natural events, and also made Voltaire into an activist against fake religious news.

There was a lot of it in that era. When, in 1761, Marc-Antoine Calas, the 22-year-oldson of a respected Protestant merchant in Toulouse, apparently committed suicide, Catholic activists spread news stories that Calas' father, Jean, had killed him because he wanted to convert to Catholicism. The local judicial authorities posted signs calling for legal witnesses to corroborate the account, successfully turning rumors into official facts, and, in turn, official news.

Jean Calas was convicted on the rumor-fueled testimony and was publicly and gruesomely tortured before being executed. Horrified at the atrocity, Voltaire wrote his own counterattacks dissecting the absurdity that young Calas would have a full understanding of the meaning of conversion and that his peaceable father would hang him for it. The Calas story eventually sparked outrage against such fake legal stories, torture and even execution. It became a touchstone for the Enlightenment itself.

Yet even the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment could not stop the flow of fake news. For example, in the years preceding the French Revolution, a cascade of pamphlets appeared in Paris exposing for the first time the details of the near-bankrupt government's spectacular budget deficit. Each came from a separate political camp, and each contradicted the other with different numbers, blaming the deficit on different finance ministers. Eventually, through government leaks and more and more verifiable accounts, enough information was made public for readers to glean a general sense of state finance; but, like today, readers had to be both skeptical and skilled to figure out the truth.

Even our glorified Founders were perpetrators of fake news for political means. To whip up revolutionary fervor, Ben Franklin himself concocted propaganda stories about murderous "scalping" Indians working in league with the British King George III. Other revolutionary leaders published fake propaganda stories that King George was sending thousands of foreign soldiers to slaughter the American patriots and turn the tide of the War of Independence to get people to enlist and support the revolutionary cause.

By the 1800s, fake news was back again, swirling around questions of race. Like Jewish blood libel, American racial sentiments and fears were powerful in producing false stories. One persistent "cottage industry" of fake news in antebellum America was stories of African-Americans spontaneously turning white. In other instances, fake news reports of slave uprisings or of crimes by slaves, led to terrible violence against African-Americans.

Sensationalism always sold well. By the early19th century, modern newspapers came on the scene, touting scoops and exposés, but also fake stories to increase circulation. The New York Sun's "Great Moon Hoax" of 1835 claimed that there was an alien civilization on the moon, and established the Sun as a leading, profitable newspaper. In 1844, anti-Catholic newspapers in Philadelphia falsely claimed that Irishmen were stealing bibles from public schools, leading to violent riots and attacks on Catholic churches. During the Gilded Age, yellow journalism flourished, using fake interviews, false experts and bogus stories to spark sympathy and rage as desired. Joseph Pulitzer's New York World published exaggerated crime dramas to sell papers. In the 1890s, plutocrats like William Randolph Hearst and his Morning Journal used exaggeration to help spark the Spanish-American War. When Hearst's correspondent in Havanawired that there would be no war, Hearst-the inspiration for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane -famously responded: "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." Hearst published fake drawings of Cuban officials strip-searching American women-and he got his war.

One silver lining in this long and alarming history of fake news is yellow journalism and its results-from civil violence to war-caused a backlash, and sent the public in search of more objective news. It was this flourishing market that sparked the rise of relatively objective journalism as an industry in turn-of-the century America. For the first time,American papers hired reporters to cover local beats and statehouses, building a chain of trust between local, state and national reporters and the public.

While partisan reporting and sensationalism never went away (just check out supermarket newsstands), objective journalism did become a successful business model-and also, until recently, the dominant one. In 1896, Adolph Ochs purchased the New York Times, looking to produce a "facts"-based newspaper that would be useful to the wealthy investor class by providing reliable business information and general news. Ochs showed that news did not have to be sensationalist to be profitable, though the paper was accused of being a mouthpiece for "bondholders."

Of course, the objective journalism consensus had its hiccups.With the advent of World War II, and in light of the Nazi and Communist propaganda machines, there was concern about the U.S. government's wartime involvement in producing news propaganda. In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy was accused of manipulating reporters like "Pavlov's dogs," but a New Yorker article from the period insisted that reporters should report and not "tell readers which 'facts' are really 'facts' and which are not." By the 1960s, a new generation of reporters signed on to report on "non establishment" stories. Many of these reporters questioned the very ideal of objectivity, yet, nonetheless, hewed to the basic guiding principle of reporting based on verifiable and reputable sources.

***

It wasn't until the rise of web-generated news that our era's journalistic norms were seriously challenged, and fake news became a powerful force again. Digital news, you might say, has brought yellow journalism back to the fore. For one, algorithms that create news feeds and compilations have no regard for accuracy and objectivity. At the same time, the digital news trend has decimated the force-measured in both money and manpower-of the traditional, objectively minded, independent press.

The Pew Research Center's "State of the Media 2016" paints a grim picture for most serious news organizations. Advertising revenue is down; staffs continue to get cut; the number of newspapers has declined by 100 since 2004. Between 2003 and 2014, with the decline of the printed press, the number of professional statehouse reporters dropped 35 percent. Professional local beat reporters are also a dying breed. These figures, trained in basic journalistic principles, were locally known and trusted. They could be found in bars and local schools and acted as the human link between statehouses, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. population. They were seen as local heroes. (Jimmy Stewart often played truth-obsessed newspaper reporters in films, like the 1948 thriller Call Northside 777.) But today, these popular role models and societal links are gone, and with them, a trusted filter within civil society-the sort of filter that can say with authority to fellow local citizens that fake news is not only fake, it is also potentially deadly.

Real news is not coming back in any tangible way on a competitive local level, or as a driver of opinion in a world where the majority of the population does not rely on professionally reported news sources and so much news is filtered via social media, and by governments. And as real news recedes, fake news will grow. We've seen the terrifying results this has had in the past-and our biggest challenge will be tofind a new way to combat the rising tide.

This article tagged under:

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The Long and Brutal History of Fake News

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The fake news hit Trent, Italy, on Easter Sunday, 1475. A 2 ½-year-old child named Simonino had gone missing, and a Franciscan preacher, Bernardino da Feltre, gave a series of sermons claiming that the Jewish community had murdered the child, drained his blood and drunk it to celebrate Passover.

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How Fake News Grows in a Post-Fact World.

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How Fake News Grows in a Post-Fact World.

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How Fake News Grows in a Post-Fact World | Ali Velshi | TEDxQueensU

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As a journalist with extensive experience, Ali has had the opportunity to witness all forms of news. One type in particular poses a threat that has been exacerbated in our digital media society - fake news.

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Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers - Simple Book Production

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Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers by Michael A. Caulfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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Learning To Spot Fake News: Start With A Gut Check

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Learning To Spot Fake News: Start With A Gut Check

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Which of these statements seems more trustworthy to you?

1) Americans are drowning in a tsunami of ignorance! There is a conspiracy at the highest levels to replace all knowledge with propaganda and disinformation.

2) A recent Stanford University report found that more than 80 percent of middle schoolers didn't understand that the phrase "sponsored content" meant "advertising."

For most of the NPR audience, this shouldn't be a tough question. The first sentence is a florid, mislabeled statement of opinion with an unverifiable, overgeneralized, ideological claim ("conspiracy at the highest levels").

The second is more measured in tone and limited in scope. And, it has a link that goes straight to the original source: a press release from a reputable university.

But these days, statements of all stripes are bombarding us via broadcast and social media. The trick is classifying them correctly before we swallow them ourselves, much less before we hit "Like," "Share" or "Retweet."

And that is the goal of an educational initiative that will be adopted by 10 universities across the country this spring.
Thinking like fact-checkers
This new approach seeks to get students thinking like, and doing the work of, fact-checkers.

"We have approached media literacy and news literacy in the past sort of like rhetoricians," says Mike Caulfield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University in Vancouver. (Can that be right? A public university based in the United States with a campus in Canada? No, it's Vancouver, Wash.)

In other words, he explains, we teach students close reading and analysis of elements, like tone. "Fact-checkers," on the other hand, "get to the truth of an issue in 60 to 90 seconds."

He says fact-checkers read laterally - moving quickly away from the original text, opening up a series of tabs in a browser to judge the credibility of its author and the sources it cites.

A new working paper, by the same Stanford researchers cited earlier, provides support for this proposition.

They pit professional fact-checkers against historians and undergraduates. When evaluating websites and searching for information online, the researchers said, "fact-checkers arrived at more warranted conclusions in a fraction of the time."
Four moves and a habit
Caulfield has distilled this approach into what he calls "Four moves and a habit," in a free online textbook that he has published. It's aimed at college students, but frankly it's relevant to everyone.

The moves are:

Check for previous work: Look around to see whether someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research. [Some places to look: Wikipedia, Snopes, Politifact and NPR's own Fact Check website.]

Go upstream to the source: Most Web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information. Is it a reputable scientific journal? Is there an original news media account from a well-known outlet? If that is not immediately apparent, then move to step 3.

Read laterally: Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network.

Circle back: If you get lost or hit dead ends or find yourself going down a rabbit hole, back up and start over.

Finally, Caulfield argues in his book that one of the most important weapons of fact-checking comes from inside the reader: "When you feel strong emotion - happiness, anger, pride, vindication - and that emotion pushes you to share a 'fact' with others, STOP."

His reasoning: Anything that appeals directly to the "lizard brain" is designed to short-circuit our critical thinking. And these kinds of appeals are very often created by active agents of deception.

"We try to convince students to use strong emotions as the mental trigger" for the fact-checking habit, he says.

Caulfield is also the director of the Digital Polarization Initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities's American Democracy Project. Starting this spring, the initiative will bring at least 10 universities together to promote web literacy. They will each adopt Caulfield's ebook as a text across several courses in different disciplines: from history to science to journalism. Students will fact-check, annotate and provide context to news stories that show up in social media feeds.

Their efforts will be published, in the hope of helping others get to the truth a little faster. You can see some initial efforts at this link.

For example, last spring, students at Western Kentucky University took up the question "Are the protesters against Trump being paid to protest?" The students traced the claim back to a Tweet by an Austin, Texas, resident that was later retracted. But his retraction, they found, received much less notice than his original, baseless statement.
The speed of a lie
I asked Caulfield whether the protester example doesn't point up a problem with trying to leverage education to combat hoaxes in the first place. He's asking students to take "90 seconds to two minutes" to confirm something before passing it along.

That is certainly faster than other media literacy methods. But half-truths and misstatements, meanwhile, spread entirely unchecked.

That's the meaning behind the maxim "A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on." (Who said this? Probably not Mark Twain. Jonathan Swift said something similar, according to this site.)

Caulfield argues education does have a role, alongside changes like better algorithms on social networks and tighter regulations, in improving the information landscape. Plus, for him, this kind of work answers a philosophical question: "What do we want education for citizens to look like in a networked world?" He uses an ecological metaphor to explain what he means:

"If you have a couple of people in a large group who identify as scientists, humanists, activists, historians, you build up a herd immunity" to falsehoods, he says. For example, a study by Facebook showed that when someone references Snopes in the comments of a Facebook share, the original sharer is 4.4 times more likely to delete his or her post. And that is the truth ... as far as I know.

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Learning To Spot Fake News: Start With A Gut Check

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Which of these statements seems more trustworthy to you? 1) Americans are drowning in a tsunami of ignorance! There is a conspiracy at the highest levels to replace all knowledge with propaganda and disinformation. 2) A recent Stanford University report found that more than 80 percent of middle schoolers didn't understand that the phrase "sponsored content" meant "advertising."

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Examines the science and arguments of global warming skepticism. Common objections like 'global warming is caused by the sun', 'temperature has changed naturally in the past' or 'other planets are warming too' are examined to see what the science really says.

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How can you help your students begin to separate fact from fiction in the news? This collection of videos and resources will get you started.

In our increasingly information-saturated society, it can be challenging for young people (or any of us!) to sort fact from fiction in journalism. We get news from all directions, at all times, on multiple channels; citizen reporting competes with major corporate conglomerates for our attention and our trust. As we get ready to celebrate News Engagement Day on October 6th, what can you do to help your students become more critical consumers of news media? The video playlist below should provide a good entry point to the discussion, and then you'll find some resources for digging deeper.

Video Playlist: Truth and The News

How to Choose Your News - Damon Brown (04:49)
This excellent video primer from TED-Ed explains how to find and consume your news thoughtfully and with the least chance of being manipulated. Visit the TED-Ed website for a full lesson that you can customize for your own classroom.

News Literacy at NYC's Intermediate School 303 (07:27)
The Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University considers itself the birthplace of the idea of news literacy. In this video, middle school kids in Coney Island learn to consume news responsibly, using curriculum the Center developed.

Why the News Isn't Really the News (02:22)
Self-proclaimed "media manipulator" Ryan Holiday, author of Trust Me, I'm Lying, reveals his trade secrets for getting false anonymous stories to the main page of major news outlets in this animated explainer by Epipheo. An excellent bonus video on the same topic is " How False News Can Spread," from TED-Ed.

Markham Nolan: How to Separate Fact and Fiction Online (13:30)
In this TED Talk, journalist Markham Nolan, managing editor at digital generation news outlet Vocativ, shares pro tips for how to verify information in real-time and how to sift for authenticity in the deluge.

News Literacy Is... (03:51)
A little low-fi, but earnest, this video from the News Literacy Project features teachers and students talking about why news literacy is valuable. The non-profit offers workshops that connect reporters to schools and resources for middle and high school teachers.

News Literacy Project Trains Young People to Be Skeptical Media Consumers (06:54)
PBS Newshour takes us inside classrooms where teachers are using curriculum developed by the News Literacy Project, including a high school in Bethesda, Maryland, and a middle school in Washington, DC.

Why News Matters (01:54)
This peppy graphic video from the McCormick Foundation makes a pitch for the value of news in our communities and explains why news literacy is a key skill to cultivate for an engaged citizenry. The Foundation offers resources for both students and teachers, and gives grants in Chicago.

Churnalism Tutorial (02:24)
Although this useful Web tool by the Sunlight Foundation has sadly been retired, and the website it was inspired by is on hiatus for lack of funding, I think the video is still worth a watch as it reminds us just how much of our news is based on repackaged press releases.

Not All Scientific Studies are Created Equal - David H. Schwartz (04:27)
Okay, I got a little TED-crazy in this playlist, but I can't ignore a great resource. This one zeroes in on the different kinds of scientific studies one hears about in the news, and it gives viewers some tools for scoping out their validity. See the full lesson on the TED-Ed website.

Watch the first video below, or watch the whole playlist on YouTube.

More Resources on News Literacy

I'm sure you're convinced at this point that our need for news literacy is ever-increasing as the volume of content we consume from all different sources grows. But it can be very difficult to teach and even harder to measure. I've gathered some teaching resources to help you get started. As always, chime in with your own questions, ideas, or favorite resources in the comments below.

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5-Minute Film Festival: 9 Videos on News Literacy

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How can you help your students begin to separate fact from fiction in the news? This collection of videos and resources will get you started. In our increasingly information-saturated society, it can be challenging for young people (or any of us!) to sort fact from fiction in journalism.

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A Field Guide to "Fake News" and Other Information Disorders

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A Field Guide to "Fake News" and Other Information Disorders explores the use of digital methods to study viral news, political memes, trolling practices and their social life online. It is a project of the Public Data Lab with support from First Draft.

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Calling out news - whether real or fake - as propaganda expresses anxieties over media power, but is it helping us a get a grip on the media landscape?

Amid the "fake news" controversies in the aftermath of the 2016 United States Presidential election, the notion of propaganda surged back into popular consciousness. Across the political spectrum, online conversations about propaganda bloomed like a thousand flowers of media anxiety.

For example, shortly after the election, futurist Alex Steffen garnered thousands of retweets and likes with a tweet that declared, "Fake news is propaganda. The powerful demanding apologies from artists is censorship. Business dealings while in office are corruption." To underscore the anti-authoritarian thrust of the message, a follow-up Medium post featured an image of 1984 author (and dedicated democratic socialist) George Orwell, invoking the thought-limiting qualities of that novel's Newspeak. Although Steffen did not name the President-Elect in his short text, the post is tagged, "Donald Trump."

While some social media users were using the notion of propaganda to critique both the President-Elect and clickbait masquerading as journalistic content, others were labeling cable news networks and newspapers of record both "fake news" and propaganda, thus enfolding both terms into longstanding critiques of the media establishment.

Propaganda, in other words, is having a moment. People are turning to propaganda as a media epithet because it helps to express discomfort with media - and the "fake news" controversy is just one part of this discomfort. The epithet gets its sting, in part, from popular imaginings of propaganda as bombastic, deceptive mass communications from an overreaching or abusive state. But this cultural imaginary can also limit our perceptions of how power and meaning move through society. State actors are involved in the current media moment, but so are a variety of other collectivities, with a variety of motives.

What is propaganda?

Propaganda is notoriously difficult to define. Beyond the generally agreed upon principle that propaganda involves some effort at persuasion, it's hard to settle on clear boundaries on what counts as propaganda. Communication scholar Philip M. Taylor briefly defines propaganda as "the deliberate attempt to persuade people to think and behave in a desired way" (2003, p.6). Philosopher Jason Stanley lists a variety of definitions, including the "classical" sense of "manipulation of the rational will to close off debate" (2015, p. 48). Stanley focuses in particular on supporting propaganda, which bolsters certain favored ideals but does so by nonrational means, and undermining propaganda, which presents itself as bolstering favored ideals but in fact "tends to erode those very ideals" (p. 53). These are only two examples, differing on many points but tied together in their attention to power and persuasion.

"We could quote definitions for pages on end," Jacques Ellul wrote in his 1965 treatise on the topic, and the situation hasn't improved much since then. But even if we leave aside the thorny question of definition, the fact of use-in-practice remains. People are using the term "propaganda" to express their discomfort with the media in this moment.

I want to ask what the resurgence of propaganda as a topic of conversation reflects about popular understandings of the media in this moment. What itch does this nebulous term scratch for the people who are using it? And what does it draw attention away from?

Holding the media to account...kind of.

Most obviously, calling news propaganda expresses a suspicion that the leading media are affected by powerful interests, either directly or indirectly. It speaks to a sense of boundaries transgressed: democratic citizens want news to be trustworthy and dedicated to the public interest. Calling a news story or news outlet propagandistic suggests that it is anything but.

The prevalence of "propaganda" as a media epithet reflects a variety of sentiments about the shortcomings of American journalism. The recent discussions of "fake news" and propaganda issue from many points on the political spectrum. We saw, during the recent election cycle, how news-like items of questionable or outright false web content, designed to garner maximum clicks and likes, sowed confusion within our national discourse.

Concerns about these new developments have been added to longstanding objections from the left that include the corporate dominance of the fourth estate and the perpetuation of social injustice, and objections from the right that include what it sees as attacks on traditional values and undue protection of partisan political figures and projects. Add to these positions the many emergent strains of anti-institutionalism, nationalism, and populism in current American political discourse, and you get a sense of how the discourse about propaganda runs far beyond typical lines of partisanship.

The epithet of propaganda contains a critique of elitism: the leading media are a bottleneck through which social reality must pass to gain a certain level of public legitimacy.

The popular revival of "propaganda" as a media epithet expresses misgivings about media power and media practices. But even as it helps to focus popular misgivings, it also creates a frame. And that frame brings assumptions with it that can make it hard to see some of the cultural aspects of the present moment.

State-controlled media?

For one, the epithet of "propaganda" raises the spectre of state control, but governments are only one of the types of collectives that can exert influence over media. The most egregious historical cases of propaganda -  ones everyone agrees were propagandistic - were media productions that issued from, or were driven by, state (or would-be state) actors. Scholarly treatments, of propaganda, too, tend to focus on state (or would-be state) actors). When coordinated, persuasive messages issue from non-state entities, we tend to use gentler terms like public relations, which shifts matters from the civic sphere to the seemingly separate sphere of commerce, or activism, which conjures images of grassroots, bottom-up persuasion. But these bright-line divisions are not as reliable as they seem.

Consider, for example, the online discussions that culminated in Edgar Welch firing an assault rifle inside Comet Ping Pong. Discussions on user-driven sites such as Reddit and 4chan helped propel conspiracy theories about a possible child sex abuse ring headquartered in the DC-area pizzeria (#Pizzagate) into popular consciousness. Subsequently, some social media users (and the New York Times) condemned the Pizzagate conspiracy theory itself as fake news. Meanwhile, other users leveled charges of propaganda at New York Times for its coverage of these events, alleging that the powerful were banding together to protect one another.

A matter of perspective

The Pizzagate conspiracy theory itself was far-fetched, to say the least; even Welch conceded that the "intel" was "not 100%." Depending on your perspective, though, discussions of Pizzagate on such sites could be described, variously, as propaganda or (misguided) activism. This is an admittedly extreme example, but it speaks to a broader issue in American culture.

One person's activism - or education, or journalism, for that matter - is another person's propaganda.

The boundaries between education, entertainment, and propaganda are blurry. This is a problem with a long history in the United States, as I have argued elsewhere. And amidst an ideologically and epistemologically divided population, agreement on the boundaries between categories like activism and propaganda are especially hard to find. Colloquial understandings of propaganda - narratives about strategic manipulation of leading media outlets by governments and or para-governmental groups - don't capture this categorical contingency.

It's not (necessarily) a state actor

If "propaganda" is a useful as a media epithet because it expresses concerns about media persuasion and power, then we must allow that a variety of actors, not just states or would-be states, can influence the television networks, newspapers of record, and leading online news sources.

Our understanding of media power (and of what it means to call something propaganda) must make room for a variety of potential collective and individual influences. This includes corporations, interest groups, activist groups, and other traditional collectives; it should also include the new forms of individual and collective presence that digital communications facilitate. This includes state-sponsored online actors and ad-hoc user collectives.

It's not always entirely serious, although the outcomes can be

Turning to the specific dynamics in play with Pizzagate, there's another way that an observer could have categorized the conspiracy theories about Comet Ping Pong that flourished as users dug through John Podesta's leaked emails, and it's one that prior conceptions of propaganda don't account for: play.

A sense of absurd play - of trolling - prevails in some corners of user-driven online spaces. Trolling involves a kind of social playfulness that, if done correctly, is undetectable to the objects of the ruse; folklorist Whitney Phillips has written brilliantly and at length on this matter. There is no way to know for certain what motivations, in which proportions, drove users to participate in the conspiracy discussions on 4chan and Reddit. It may have been sincere concern, absurd play, curiosity, nihilism, boredom, or some mixture of all of these.

Our understandings of media persuasion and power need to be capacious enough to acknowledge that some users participate in online projects such as this to gain a particular outcome, while others participate to enjoy the engaging or absurd play of the process. The resulting media texts can spur serious outcomes. Some of these may have been intended (e.g. entrenching negative sentiment against Clinton and her associates); others may not have been (as, seemingly, was the case with Welch).

Shifting the frame

Americans will be grappling with these novel contexts of media persuasion and power for some time. And the use of "propaganda" as a media epithet will likely continue. As these conversations unspool over the coming months and years, one way to avoid getting mired in is-it-or-isn't-it debates that serve as proxies for a fractured civic sphere is to ask what people get from using the epithet. People are referencing a disconcerting set of realizations about how media and power function in our society. In some cases, those realizations challenge the foundational beliefs of our constitutional democracy.

While definitions of propaganda may vary, they generally have to do with power and persuasion. But propaganda (versus entertainment, versus education, versus activism...) is a matter of perspective. Almost any communication can be interpreted as propagandistic in nature. Outside of the most blatantly egregious, demagogic or hateful cases, attempting to stifle propaganda won't work. The emergence of propaganda as a media epithet, in practical use, isn't a cause but a symptom of deeper fissures in American culture.

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What's Propaganda Got To Do With It? - Data & Society: Points

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Amid the "fake news" controversies in the aftermath of the 2016 United States Presidential election, the notion of propaganda surged back into popular consciousness. Across the political spectrum, online conversations about propaganda bloomed like a thousand flowers of media anxiety.

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Young people in the US are generally skeptical of the news they consume, so they turn to multiple news sources to make their own judgements on the information, new research shows.

The Knight Foundation commissioned six focus groups that were conducted by the Data & Society Research Institute last summer to understand how people between the ages of 14 and 24 interacted with news. In all, 52 teens and young adults were interviewed in the US cities of Philadelphia, Chicago, and Charlotte. The researchers urged caution due to the very small sample size, but there are a few takeaways about attitudes toward news, which itself was defined in an interesting way by the participants-taken broadly to mean anything from a status update from a friend on Facebook to a cable-TV news report.

For one, the researchers found that young people tended to encounter news by accident, while perusing platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and apps like Apple News, rather than by seeking it out. And that they rarely took the information at face value, usually because they perceived biases, inaccuracies, or, on social media, were unsure of the original reporting source.

This ties into a broader nationwide trend-trust in the US mainstream media sank to a new low last year, as Quartz has previously reported.

"News doesn't have to give even accurate information on a situation," one 23-year-old woman said in the Knight Foundation report. "It just has to be current and, like, an interest in society right now.... It's always biased in some way or another."

Another young woman said, "Even if it's factual, it may be sort of tainted."

This overarching skepticism drove many of the young people interviewed to use numerous news sources to corroborate or clarify news reports that interested them. They'd come across a news report on Facebook and then, as an example, turn to a TV news network like CNN or a platform like Reddit, which aggregates content from various sources, to verify the information.

Because the young people interviewed largely believed that all individuals have their own biases, they tended to place more credence on reports from news outlets or reporters that were more open about their biases. Then, at least, they knew what viewpoint to expect. In general, the participants considered outlets that were outside of the mainstream to be more transparent, but some also included major cable-TV news networks like Fox News and MSNBC in this mix.

"Fox leans toward more the red side," said a 23-year-old interviewed. "CNN cares more about necessarily being the first. MSNBC cares more leaning toward the left. Everyone already has their biases. As long as you're really aware of them, you can make a better opinion about something."

Some consulted news organizations from across the political spectrums, or international sources like al-Jazeera that were more detached from US perspectives, so they could form their own opinions. And they were more likely to consult multiple news sources when the topic was tied to politics rather than say, celebrity gossip-or when it mattered to them personally.

"When Prince passed away," said one 22-year-old participant, "when I'd seen that on Instagram, I was like, 'It's not true.' But when I'd seen it on CNN, I was like, 'Prince is dead.' Same thing with Muhammad Ali."

This is in line with 2016 research by the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that showed a majority of US teens said they discussed how to vet the credibility of information they find online, the value of evaluating evidence that backs up opinions, and how to find different viewpoints online, in school.

Overall, the Knight Foundation report showed a rather healthy approach to news at a time when media literacy in the US has been called into question. But it's unclear how helpful the participants' methods were at verifying information.

"It really is an open question as to how effective it is in daily life," lead author Mary Madden, at Data & Society, told Quartz. "It is possible that they have a false sense of confidence in some cases in their ability to assess these stories," she said of the participants.

Other nationwide studies have shown that Americans who follow news links online have trouble distinguishing between the social platforms where they encounter news and the outlets that report it, and that most students can't tell the difference between ad-like "sponsored content" and real news online.

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Young Americans don't trust any single news report on its own-and they think everything is biased

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Young people in the US are generally skeptical of the news they consume, so they turn to multiple news sources to make their own judgements on the information, new research shows. The Knight Foundation commissioned six focus groups that were conducted by the Data & Society Research Institute last summer to understand how people between the ages of 14 and 24...

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Did you hear about... the pregnant spider?

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An example of how to check for verification with a very hairy spider, from the Center for News Literacy. See more examples and lessons like this at drc.centerfornewsliteracy.org

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Schools don’t always teach kids how to tell fact from fiction on the internet. But news literacy is more important now than ever.

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Digital Citizenship Survival Kit by TechChef4u

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TOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

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Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum

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Pew Research Center's Journalism Project

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Where do Americans get their news about politics and government? And how does the media environment intersect with political polarization? A Pew Research Center study based on a representative online survey finds striking differences in news habits along the ideological spectrum.

Explore the data:

Where do Americans get their news about politics and government? And how does the media environment intersect with political polarization? A Pew Research Center study based on a representative online survey finds striking differences in news habits along the ideological spectrum.

Explore the data:

Source: American Trends Panel (wave 1). Survey conducted March 19-April 29, 2014. Based on all Web respondents (representative of the 89% of Americans with internet access). Each graphic shows the ideological distribution of all respondents who got news about government and politics from the source over the course of a week. Sizes of each graphic reflect the relative sizes of their audiences, which can also be seen in the reference graphic on the top right of the page. (Overall N=2,901; sample sizes for consumers of each source available upon request.) Ideological consistency based on a scale of 10 political values questions.

Updated 10/21/14: Graphic updated to align visual representation of five segments of ideological spectrum with underlying data. All data labels and percentages are unchanged.

Source: American Trends Panel (wave 1). Survey conducted March 19-April 29, 2014. Based on all Web respondents (representative of the 89% of Americans with internet access). (Overall N=2,901; see About the Study for sample sizes of each ideological group.) Respondents were asked which (of 36 sources for news about government and politics) they have heard of, trust, distrust and got news from in the past week. Ideological consistency based on a scale of 10 political values questions. To see audience profiles, click each source. *Note that ThinkProgress, Daily Kos, Mother Jones and The Ed Schultz Show do not have audience profiles because the sample sizes for these audiences are too small to analyze.

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Where CNN's Audience Fits on the Political Spectrum

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Where do Americans get their news about politics and government? And how does the media environment intersect with political polarization? A Pew Research Center study based on a representative online survey finds striking differences in news habits along the ideological spectrum. Explore the data: Where do Americans get their news about politics and government?

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Right, left and type of quality for publishers

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We all know digital literacy is important, but what does it look in action? Find out by getting to know the TT Digital Literacy Framework, and previewing samples from our new lessons series.

Essential Questions

Why are so many students vulnerable to media manipulation and "fake" news?

What support do students need to learn how to locate and verify reliable sources?

Part I: Digital Literacy Framework

The Teaching Tolerance Digital Literacy Framework identifies seven key areas in which students need support developing digital and civic literacy skills. The Teaching Tolerance Digital Literacy Project will offer four age-appropriate lessons on each competency identified in the framework: one each for grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12.

The Framework

The numbered items represent the overarching knowledge and skills that make up the framework. The letters represent more granular examples to help educators evaluate students' mastery.

Students can locate and verify reliable sources of information.

Evaluate sources for reliability.

Use a variety of tools to evaluate sources for bias.

Understand and identify common reasoning errors.

Part II: Digital Literacy Lessons

Grades K-2: Choosing Reliable Sources

Grades 3-5: Evaluating Reliable Sources

Grades 6-8: Analyzing How Words Communicate Bias

Grades 9-12: Coming soon!

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Toolkit for "Speaking of Digital Literacy"

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We all know digital literacy is important, but what does it look in action? Find out by getting to know the TT Digital Literacy Framework, and previewing samples from our new lessons series. Why are so many students vulnerable to media manipulation and "fake" news?

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Learn the language that can help you-and your students-decode the complexities of the digital-media landscape. This vocabulary list covers the many ways "fake news" finds its way online, highlights key terms necessary to understand media manipulation, and describes how our brains absorb information-and how they can steer us away from the truth.

As our story " What Is the 'Alt-Right'?" reveals, the internet can be a gateway to hate, particularly for young people who don't know how to critically evaluate sources. This list is part of Teaching Tolerance's new digital literacy project, an initiative to help educators bring these concepts into the classroom and equip students to guard against hate and bias online.

Agnotology: The study of ignorance.

Algorithm: A procedure used to locate specific data within a collection of information. Also called a "search algorithm."

Apophenia: The tendency to perceive meaningful connections in unrelated things; seeing patterns where none exist.

Astroturfing: The practice of concealing the financial stakeholders promoting a message or an organization so that it seems to come from and be supported by grassroots entities.

Belief perseverance: The tendency to continue believing something even after learning that the foundation of the belief is false.

Bot: An automated online program; short for web robot.

Chan culture: Beliefs and activities related to online message boards such as 4chan and 8chan, where often-offensive images and memes are created and distributed.

Clickbait: Online content created with the primary purpose of attracting visitors and enticing them to click on a link to a specific web page.

Confirmation bias: The tendency to process new information as confirmation of the beliefs one already holds.

Cognitive bias: A mental-processing error (e.g., in reasoning, interpreting or remembering) that often results from clinging to preferences and beliefs in spite of contrary evidence.

Computational propaganda: The manipulation of information and communication technologies to influence attitudes, thinking processes and behavior.

Copypasta: A block of online text that has been copied and pasted from somewhere else.

Counterknowledge: Inaccurate information that is presented as fact and is believed by a critical mass of people.

Crowdsourcing: The practice of acquiring information for or contributions to a project by seeking the aid of a large number of people, usually via the internet.

Digital footprint: The information about a person that can be found online as a result of their internet activity.

Digital native: A person born or raised during the digital age and who is assumed to be familiar with the internet, computers and other digital technology from an early age.

Disinformation: False information that is disseminated to the media or other entities with the purpose of deceiving.

Dox: To publicly share private or identifying information about a person online, usually with a malicious or vengeful purpose.

Dunning-Kruger effect: A cognitive bias that leads people of limited skills or knowledge to mistakenly believe their abilities are greater than they actually are.

Fake news: Disinformation that is presented as news and optimized for online sharing.

Filter bubble: The limited perspective that can result from personalized search algorithms.

Group polarization: A group's tendency to make more extreme decisions than its individual members would typically be inclined to make.

Groupthink: A group's practice of thinking or making decisions in such a way that promotes harmony and conformity within the group at the expense of creativity or individual responsibility.

Heuristic: A cognitive shortcut, rule or method that helps people solve problems in less time than it would take to think the problem all the way through.

Homophily: The tendency to form connections with people who are similar to oneself.

Illusion of comprehension: A cognitive bias that occurs when people mistake familiarity or awareness for understanding. Also called the "familiarity effect."

Information cascade: A phenomenon in which people echo the opinions of others, usually online, even when their own opinions or exposure to information contradicts that opinion. When information cascades form a pattern, this pattern can begin to overpower later opinions by making it seem as if a consensus already exists.

Information diet: The kinds and quantity of information that a person consumes on a regular basis.

Information literacy: The ability to recognize the need for information and to locate, analyze and use it effectively in a variety of ways.

Information pollution: The tainting of available information with inaccuracy, redundancy and lack of quality.

Infotainment: Material, online or otherwise, that combines information with entertainment. Often used to describe material ostensibly intended to inform but which is primarily designed for entertainment.

Lulz: Laughter and enjoyment, usually at someone else's expense.

Media hacking: The manipulation of electronic and online media, especially social media, to shape a particular narrative.

Meme: An image, video, phrase, symbol or other piece of culture that is meant to be funny and is shared widely via the internet, often with slight changes.

Memejacking: The act of hijacking a meme and using it for purposes different from those of its original authors.

Motivated reasoning: The tendency to process new information in such a way that it will fit with previously held beliefs.

Myside bias: The tendency to endorse information that supports one's previously held beliefs, truth notwithstanding.

Native advertising: Online advertising that fluidly adheres to the look and feel of the context or platform in which it is placed.

Opinion laundering: The practice of making opinions seem more valid by representing them as coming from think tanks or other sources that seem reliable. See Astroturfing.

Poe's law: Taken from a comment made by an online forum participant, Nathan Poe, the idea that it is nearly impossible to distinguish between an extremist view and a parody of it without clear evidence of the author's purpose.

Social spam: Unwanted material that shows up on social networking platforms and any website with content generated by users.

Sock puppet: An online user posing as another person-often a real person-usually to express their own views anonymously.

Sponsored content: An advertiser's paid content in an online publication that takes on the look and qualities of that publisher's editorial content.

Stealth marketing: The practice of paying people to promote products without revealing that those people are being compensated.

Troll: A person who engages in provocative or harassing online behavior using their real identity. Distinct from a Bot or a Sock puppet.

Two-sides fallacy: The presentation of an issue that makes it seem to have two sides of equal weight or significance, when in fact a consensus or much stronger argument supports just one side. Also called "false balance" or "false equivalence."

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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Commentary

How history teachers can teach students to recognize political "fakery"

How should educators respond to "fake news"? Recently, this question has been discussed on NPR and dozens of other media outlets. It pervades education blogs, gets raised urgently at teacher meetings, and circulates around the faculty lunch table at the independent school where I teach. Lessons and classes on "media literacy" are proliferating almost as fast as the president's tweets. While the phrase is newly in vogue, students well educated in U.S. history should already be quite familiar with fake news and how to assess it.

Fake news is integral to the American political tradition. It surfaces especially in moments of crisis. It often involves conspiracy theories, outright lying, and deceitful inference. It has presented as both fringe and mainstream.

I have taught this lesson for over 30 years, in both high schools and colleges, and have seen how many terrific history teachers impart the tools needed to ferret out fake political claims. They do so, first, by contextualizing the rhetoric of fakery: placing it in a larger stream of events and ideas. They also provide contrasting points of view and arguments. Additionally, good teachers dissect political rhetoric: Does it appeal to hope or fear? Does it indict by inference or fact? What role does it consign speaker and audience? Finally, committed teachers of history prize complexity while insisting on truth-an end arrived at through painstaking research and thought. Thus, history teachers empower students to assess false assertions.

In his Pulitzer-winning classic from the 1960s, Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn analyzed The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and discovered the colonists' profound, yet groundless, insistence that there existed a conspiracy in England to rob them of their liberties. Revolutionary-era pamphlets repeatedly identified the architect of this plot as the English politician John Stuart, Lord Bute, "whose apparent absence from politics since 1763 could be seen as one of his more successful dissimulations," Bailyn deadpanned. Thomas Jefferson wrote conspiracy into the Declaration of Independence by asserting that King George III's treatment of America "evinces a design to reduce [the colonies] under absolute despotism."

History teachers should help students understand how historical context and opposing viewpoints can shed new light on such political rhetoric. In 1776, for instance, most English politicians saw their American policy as mild and enlightened. The Revolutionaries, on the other hand, saw English policy as a massive plot. It wasn't.

The run-up to the Civil War also included prominent claims of conspiracy. Abolitionists and politicians proclaimed the existence of a sinister "Slave Power" cabal intent on expanding slavery and dominating the federal government.

Abraham Lincoln famously referenced this conspiracy and "proved" it by inference in his "House Divided" speech of 1858. Describing slavery's spread westward and the pro-slave result of the Dred Scott U.S. Supreme Court case, Lincoln asserted: "We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert." Comparing the major conspirators of the slave power to "workmen" building a house; referring to Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, President Franklin Pierce, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, and President James Buchanan; and depicting the systematic expansion of slavery, Lincoln concluded that "we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft before the first lick was struck." Historians have yet to find the smoking gun that eluded Lincoln in his speech.

This can offer students another instructive example of why context matters in political rhetoric. At the time of Lincoln's speech in 1858, for instance, Southern slaveholders imagined themselves an embattled minority in national politics-not an implacable power.

In a famous essay from 1964, the historian Richard Hofstadter described a "Paranoid Style in American Politics." His analysis ranged from 19th-century beliefs in Masonic and Catholic plots to usurp traditional values, to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's 1951 smear of the eminent soldier and secretary of state George Marshall. What distinguished modern political paranoia, Hofstadter said, "may be traced to the effects of the mass media." It enabled a "literature of the paranoid style ... richer and more circumstantial" and provided "a vast theater" for the paranoid imagination. Paranoid rants, which Hofstadter identified with those on the extreme right and their fears of being "dispossessed," had become even more grandiose and pervasive in modern times. So it looked more than a half-century ago.

In a history classroom, students should look not just at the substance of this paranoia, but, for example, at how McCarthy's message formed part of the fabric of the Cold War.

In its method and subject matter, history is uniquely suited to explaining our recurring fascination for fake news. Sure, Twitter and the internet are recent platforms for deceit, news cycles today run faster than ever, and some teachers lack the training or ability to lead students to critical perspectives. But, getting to the bottom of why we continuously fall for fake news requires a deep understanding of our past.

Published in Print: March 22, 2017, as Fake News Isn't New

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Commentary How should educators respond to "fake news"? Recently, this question has been discussed on NPR and dozens of other media outlets. It pervades education blogs, gets raised urgently at teacher meetings, and circulates around the faculty lunch table at the independent school where I teach.

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Ideas & Examples for Teaching News Literacy 

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Ideas & Examples for Teaching News Literacy 

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The Sift: Ideas and examples for teaching news literacy next week

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I often tell teachers that news literacy learning opportunities happen every single day, and that was certainly true this week. In fact, I had a difficult time choosing which examples to feature in this issue.

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Padlet by Shannon McClintock Miller: Media Literacy Resources & more

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Padlet by Shannon McClintock Miller: Media Literacy Resources & more

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USA Today: Students need to know this for media literacy

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Students today are increasingly turning to online new sources to meet their research needs. Because of this, it is important for educators to teach students about trustworthy news sources and separ...

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Many primary source documents and reports.

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Many primary source documents and reports.

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Explore the sharing of claims & fact checking online.

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Explore the sharing of claims & fact checking online.

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Explore the Tweets They Didn't Want You to See

Politwoops tracks deleted tweets by public officials, including people currently in office and candidates for office.

Politwoops tracks deleted tweets by public officials, including people currently in office and candidates for office. If you think we're missing someone, please email us with their name, state, political party, office they hold or are seeking and, of course, their Twitter handle.

Are your deleted tweets displayed here but you think they shouldn't be? Here's how to let us know.

Are your deleted tweets displayed here but you think they shouldn't be? Here's how to let us know.

Original Dutch version: Politwoops.nl

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Politwoops tracks deleted tweets by public officials, including people currently in office and candidates for office. Politwoops tracks deleted tweets by public officials, including people currently in office and candidates for office. If you think we're missing someone, please email us with their name, state, political party, office they hold or are seeking and, of course, their Twitter handle.

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C-SPAN.org | National Politics | History | Nonfiction Books

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C-SPAN.org gives you access to C-SPAN's daily coverage of Washington and more than 200,000 hours of extensively indexed and archived C-SPAN video.

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Information evaluation tool for older students.

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Information evaluation tool for younger students.

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One of my friends spent this past weekend working with her 2 nd grade daughter on a research project. While her daughter flew through the arts and crafts portion and was able to handwrite the "sloppy copy" of her presentation, she struggled when it came to typing the final draft. She didn't know where the period was. She didn't know how to use the shift key (and then declared that turning caps lock on and off was far superior and easier than using the shift key). Typing was taking a lot longer than expected and it was tiring her out. My friend ended up sharing the typing duties with her daughter (who had to dictate from her "sloppy copy").

This reminded me how easy it is to overestimate our students' abilities when it comes to technology. The general assumption is that they arrive in the world with an innate knowledge of how to operate all things digital. It's not until you work with students that you begin to see how much guidance and instruction they really need.

One of my favorite things to work on with students in this area is website evaluation. They all have a very strong belief that they know how and where to find any information they need online. Almost all of my students arrive at my school with one simple rule for choosing online sources: Don't use Wikipedia. This has been drilled into them by almost every teacher who has assigned them a research project. But beyond that, they tend to assume that if it's online, it must be true.

When working with older students (8 th through 12 th grade), I've always relied on the CRAAP Test (pdf) from California State University Chico. And I will admit I enjoy starting a lesson by telling them, "Today's class is going to be CRAAP-tastic" (especially if my supervisor is observing me for that class).

As wonderful a tool as it is, the CRAAP Test has a sophistication (despite its name) that makes it inaccessible for the 5 th through 7 th grade. I wanted something easier for them.

(Perhaps at this point I should pause to let you know that my school, while co-ed, is predominantly boys - they make up about 88% of our student population. And sometimes lesson planning is all about knowing your audience.)

So in the middle school Information Skills class, we now teach the FART Test. Needless to say, when the idea is first introduced we lose about 5 minutes of class to giggles and various fart noises. But then we can get down to the serious business of evaluation.

F: Is the site Friendly to the eyes? Is it easy to read? Did the creator take time to make a well designed website? Is the site free of lots of flashy things that distract you from the text? If someone doesn't bother to present the information in a neat fashion, the information may not be worth using.

A: Does the Author have Authority? Is he an expert on the issue? Does the author identify herself and give you a way to contact her and ask a question? If someone doesn't bother to take credit for his work, that may be a sign that he doesn't want to be connected to it.

R: Is the information Repeated elsewhere? Does the author cite her sources so you can verify her information? If you find the most fascinating tidbit of information, but only one person claims to know it, and can't tell you where she learned that, and no other source confirms it, it's probably not a piece of information you want to use.

T: Is the information Timely? When was the information published? Is your topic time sensitive? Has the website been updated recently? Old information doesn't help with current issue research and websites that have been abandoned may not be the best sources.

Finally, you have to ask yourself, does something smell bad about this site?

The nice thing about the FART Test is that it pretty well slides in the CRAAP Test as the students get older. It's something the students remember easily. Each year I start the year off by having the returning 8 th grade students teach the concept to new students who have joined their class. They make posters to hang in the middle school classrooms as a reminder that web evaluation belongs everywhere, not just in the library. It's a great refresher and an ice breaker.

What fun lessons do you go to for web evaluation?

Categories: Blog Topics, Student Engagement/ Teaching Models

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Web Evaluation: Does This Website Smell Funny to You? | Knowledge Quest

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One of my friends spent this past weekend working with her 2nd grade daughter on a research project. While her daughter flew through the arts and crafts portion and was able to handwrite the "sloppy copy" of her presentation, she... Read More ›

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Some scientific journals will publish literally anything for a price.

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Some scientific journals will publish literally anything for a price.

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Some scientific journals will publish literally anything for a price. That includes a meme-filled paper by "Lucas McGeorge" and "Annette Kin" referencing "midi-chlorians." Yes, George Lucas' attempt to explain feeling the Force with faux biology is now published "scientific research."

The science community has long known that certain "predatory journals" will publish almost any paper for a fee without proper peer review. Some watchdogs have submitted fake papers by fake researchers to these journals to highlight how bogus journals harm the integrity of the Open Access publishing movement, by taking advantage of a loophole. This newest sting from the anonymous science blogger Neuroskeptic is truly astounding for just how silly the fake paper is.

"The goal was to see whether journals would publish a manuscript that, while seemingly scientific, was actually a joke," Neuroskeptic told Gizmodo in an email. "I didn't want to just submit nonsense (like a computer-generated text), or a bad paper, but rather something that was verifiably based on fiction (i.e. Star Wars)."

Most of the paper's text comes from copying the Wikipedia page about mitochondria, replacing any instance of "mitochondr-" with "midichlor-," and then rearranging the words so the paper didn't look like straight plagiarism. Neuroskeptic even included the text of the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the wise, word-for-word.

Of the nine suspect, open-access journals to which Neuroskeptic submitted the paper, three published it, and one asked for a $360 fee. Two of those journals have since removed the fake research, though the pages are cached. Neurosketpic noted that one journal from the alleged predatory publisher OMICS did reject the paper. Strangely, one journal peer-reviewed the paper, spotted the spoof, and rather than reject the paper outright, asked for a resubmission with the joke comment " The authors have neglected to add the following references: Lucas et al., 1977, Palpatine et al., 1980, and Calrissian et al., 1983."

This new sting comes on the heels of another, much larger sting: Back in March, researchers sent an editorial board application on behalf of a fake scientist (whose name translated to Dr. Fraud) to 360 research journals, and 48 appointed the scientist to their board. And in 2013, Journalist John Bohannon sent 300 copies of a bogus paper to predatory journals. Sixty percent accepted the paper.

If someone applied to a top position at a company, you'd hope a hiring manager would at least...
Read more

Neuroskeptic points out that this probably doesn't mean the publishing process is broken. As Gizmodo has reported in the past, many of these journals have websites that look like high school computer class projects. Still, these journals are exploiting a loophole in the Open Access publishing model, where researchers pay to submit their research to a journal who then publishes it without a paywall. The journals may fool inexperienced scientists, or serve as a tool for publication-hungry researchers to publish, as we've previously reported.

It can be difficult to tell who's legit and who isn't-scientists used to have access to Jeffrey Beall's blacklist, which Beall no longer maintains. Neuroskeptic pointed out that "personally, I rely on MEDLINE's listings." For example, "if a journal is listed on MEDLINE, which means it appears on PubMed, then it's almost certainly legitimate." When it comes to life science journals, at least, Neuroskeptic thought that non-listed journals could be legitimate, but mostly weren't.

So, there's a clear problem present in scientific publishing, and it's likely we'll continue to see stings trying to weed out the spammers and fraudsters. For now, we're left with published "research" backing what could be the worst attempt at bad science ever to enter science fiction. May the force be with you, I guess.

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did you ever hear the tragedy of darth plagueis the wise?

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Scientific Journals Publish Bogus Paper About Midi-chlorians from Star Wars

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Some scientific journals will publish literally anything for a price. That includes a meme-filled paper by "Lucas McGeorge" and "Annette Kin" referencing "midi-chlorians." Yes, George Lucas' attempt to explain feeling the Force with faux biology is now published "scientific research."

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Burlington High School librarian Shannon Walters teaches students how to question what they see and more...

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Burlington High School librarian Shannon Walters teaches students how to question what they see and more...

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CLOSE

BURLINGTON, Vt. - Read any fake news lately? School librarians have. And now they are teaching students CRAAP to help them evaluate and verify news content to ferret out the false from the real.

CRAAP, an acronym that stands for Currency (timeliness), Relevance (importance), Authority (source), Accuracy (reliability) and Purpose (reason) helps students sort through the overwhelming flood of digital information.

"These are the questions we have to introduce these ideas to kids before they think they know everything," said Shannon Walters, Burlington High School librarian.
Related:
"It used to be that we had to gather from a scarcity of resources. Now we have to help our students and our faculty navigate an overflow of information to determine what's the best resource to meet their needs," Walters said.

Students might be savvy about what type of image to post to Instagram versus Snapchat, but librarians in Chittenden County said that doesn't mean they can discern fake from real.

Under the CRAAP system, students evaluate the accuracy and validity of content by answering a list of questions. For instance, to verify the authority of the author of an article, students would ask:

* Who is the author/publisher/source/sponsor?

* Are the author's credentials or organizational affiliations given?

* What are the author's credentials or organizational affiliations?

* What are the author's qualifications to write on the topic?

* Is there contact information, such as a publisher or email address?

* Does the URL reveal anything about the author or source? Examples: .com .edu .gov .org .net

The famous "Helicopter Shark" photo is classic fakery, made by combining two real photos -- a shark breaching off the coast of South Africa with an Air Force photo taken in San Francisco Bay -- to create a spectacular yet completely false image. Shannon Walters uses this image to teach students how to critically examine an image to help verify what's real and what's not. (Photo: COURTESY)

The battle for accuracy is older than broadband. School librarians have been working to educate students about online sourcing since the internet became popularized sometime after 1996.

Information skills among high school students are not strong in the U.S. according to a 2016 study by Stanford History Education Group at Stanford University.

"[...] in every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students' lack of preparation," the Stanford study stated.

The study evaluated 7,000 college, middle and high school student answers to questions about online information.

They were asked to evaluate a page that contained, sponsored content, advertisements and news articles. They were also asked to assess an image and a tweet to see if they could accurately source the content.

More than 80% of middle school students thought that "sponsored content," was a real news story. Fewer than 20% of students questioned the source of a photo post containing a false report of mutated flowers from a nuclear power plant failure.

A falsely attributed image used as an example in Stanford University's 2016 study, (Photo: Courtesy)

President of the Vermont School Library Association and South Burlington's Orchard Elementary School Library Media and Instructional Technology Specialist Donna Sullivan-MacDonald pointed to the Stanford study to highlight the importance of digital learning.

She said she began working with 4th- and 5th-grade students about 20 years ago. She used a guide by educator Kathy Schroke that taught students how to critically evaluate a website.

MacDonald, who uses a Common Sense Media program called Digital Passport, plans to incorporate it this fall with a new app from Google called: Internet Awesome, which she helped "Beta test" with her students last year. The free app uses games to get kids thinking about what makes the best password, how to behave online and how to sort real from fake information.

These programs are in line with Vermont Department of Education's digital learning goals, which include empowering students to take an active role in their own education and developing responsible digital citizens.

The Agency of Education's 2014 Quality Standards recommends that schools with over 300 students have at least "one full-time library media specialist and sufficient staff to implement a program that supports literacy, information and technology standards."

Burlington School District reduced in 2016 full-time library staff to help make up a $1.4 million deficit.

When the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in May re-accredited the high school it recommended the district add back a high school librarian/media specialist, which it did.

Teaching media literacy is different than checking material out, according to Walters, the incoming BHS librarian.

She explained that without a full-time librarian a library can become a space to get stuff instead of a place to make meaning: more of supermarket than a kitchen, Walters said, borrowing an analogy teacher librarian.

"We want students to come to conclusions that are not only true but personally meaningful and relevant," Walters said.
Follow Nicole Higgins DeSmet on Twitter: @NicoleHDeSmet
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2vU5jpa

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School librarians teach CRAAP to fight fake news

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CLOSE BURLINGTON, Vt. - Read any fake news lately? School librarians have. And now they are teaching students CRAAP to help them evaluate and verify news content to ferret out the false from the real. CRAAP, an acronym that stands for Currency (timeliness), Relevance (importance), Authority (source), Accuracy (reliability) and Purpose (reason) helps students sort through the overwhelming flood of digital information.

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We created our free LAMPlit resource guides to help you find your way and make smart choices about media and technologies.

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Frontier - Writing and research that students love - Sign up for a trial today

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Frontier: Digital writing and research that will engage your students like never before! Teachers can sign up for a free teacher trial. ELA Grades 3-8.

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Curriculum

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History Lessons | Stanford History Education Group

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This curriculum teaches students how to investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate the trustworthiness of multiple perspectives on historical issues and learn to make historical claims backed by documentary evidence.

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Lesson Ideas

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As the national attention to fake news and the debate over what to do about it continue, one place many are looking for solutions is in the classroom.

Since a recent Stanford study showed that students at practically all grade levels can't determine fake news from the real stuff, the push to teach media literacy has gained new momentum. The study showed that while students absorb media constantly, they often lack the critical thinking skills needed to tell fake news from the real stuff.

Teachers are taking up the challenge to change that. NPR Ed put out a social media call asking how educators are teaching fake news and media literacy, and we got a lot of responses. Here's a sampling from around the country:
Fake news "Simon Says"
In Scott Bedley's version of Simon Says, it's not those two magic words that keep you in the game, but deciding correctly whether a news story is real or not.

To start off the game, Bedley sends his fifth-graders at Plaza Vista School in Irvine, Calif., an article to read on their laptops. He gives them about three minutes to make their decision - they have to read the story carefully, examine its source and use their judgment. Those who think the article is false, stand up. The "true" believers stay in their seats.

Bedley says he's been trying to teach his students for a while to look carefully at what they're reading and where it comes from. He's got a seven-point checklist his students can follow:

1. Do you know who the source is, or was it created by a common or well-known source? Example National Geographic, Discovery, etc.
2. How does it compare to what you already know?
3. Does the information make sense? Do you understand the information?
4. Can you verify that the information agrees with three or more other sources that are also reliable?
5. Have experts in the field been connected to it or authored the information?
6. How current is the information?
7. Does it have a copyright?
Subtle changes
Bedley also teamed up recently with Todd Flory at Wheatland Elementary School in Wichita, Kan., to do a fake news challenge via Skype. Flory's fourth-graders chose two real articles and wrote a fake article of their own. Then, they presented them to Bedley's class in California.

The fifth-graders had four minutes to do some extra research based on the presentations, and then they decided which article out of the three were fake. Most importantly, they had to explain why they thought it was fake. Otherwise, no points.

Flory says writing the fake news article was more difficult for his students than they expected because they had to make it believable.

"It really hammered home the idea to them that fake news doesn't have to be too sensational," he says. "It can be a very subtle change, but that subtle change can have big consequences."

Every Friday, Flory's class participates in what he calls Genius Hour. His students propose a question to answer through online research. But before they took to the Internet, Flory had to walk his students through the steps: What are reliable and trusted websites? How do you effectively search on the Internet and verify information?

He uses Skype to connect his students with researchers and scientists from all over the world. He calls this "authentic research."

"It's so much more powerful for them to do some of this authentic research when they're able to hear from a scientist who's seeing firsthand the effects of climate change," Flory says. This year's class got to talk to a penguin scientist.

Flory says he's not only teaching his students effective media literacy skills; he is also helping them to be better citizens through global engagement and interaction.
Let them eat fake (news)
Remember Marie Antoinette and "Let them eat cake" - her famous line about the poor that got her in all that trouble?

Thing is, it never happened. Fake news!

For Diane Morey and her ninth-graders at Danvers High School in Danvers, Mass., that's a teachable moment.

"The media of the day didn't have Facebook, Twitter or partisan websites," Morey says. "But they did have pamphlets."

She shows her class cartoons and pamphlets from the French Revolutionary period that criticized Antoinette, and then discusses the conclusions that were made from those sources. She also includes a primary source: a letter written by Antoinette.

Morey says history is rich with examples of fake news, and since source analysis is the core of her lesson plans, she doesn't need a textbook.

"We don't study [history] to memorize Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI," she explains. "We're studying this because we can see this happening in the current-day political climate."

Morey encourages students to bring in examples of articles from today's news that don't ring true.

"Once you expose it to them," she says, "it's like a game for them, seeing, 'Hey, I'm not sure I can trust this.' "
Extra layers
For 13 years, Larry Ferlazzo has been teaching kids who are learning English how to read and write. Now, he's adding another layer: helping them figure out if what they're reading is true.

Ferlazzo teaches at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. He's also a blogger and journalist.

Last month, he wrote a lesson plan on addressing fake news to English language learners (ELLs), which was published in The New York Times.

He says media literacy is especially important for ELLs for two reasons. First, they're not fluent in the language they're reading, adding an extra level of difficulty in deciding what to believe. On top of that, false or exaggerated news about immigration could have a major impact on their lives.

His lesson starts off with a few examples of reliable and fake news. Then, some basic journalism stuff: Students identify the different parts of the news, from the "lede" to quotations. They enter all that into a diagram on paper so they have a visual representation of what they're reading.

That diagram eventually becomes a guide for students to write their own fake news lede that they can share with other classmates or post on a class blog.
Media consumers and contributors
In 2015, Spencer Brayton and his colleague Natasha Casey revamped a media literacy course for students at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Ill. Brayton says the key is the critical approach.

"Students come in expecting that we're going to lecture," Brayton explains. "But we have them think about certain power structures in how information is produced and how it reaches them. If they're going to understand how they're going to take it in, then they have to know how the news is going to be produced."

To take the class, students need a Twitter account. From the very first week, they are asked to follow five to 10 accounts on Twitter that promote media and information literacy, like Media Literacy Now or Renee Hobbs.

As they follow these posts and add additional ones, the goal is that they'll start to recognize fake news and other biases or viewpoints in media.

By the end of the course, Brayton says students begin to see themselves not only as creators of information, but as credible sources of information too.

The Twitter assignments encourage his students to engage with social media - retweeting, following and commenting - which Brayton says helps his students see how they play a role in spreading information to other media consumers. That means they have to take what they share more seriously.

"In looking at this issue, people seem to want a quick solution to fake news, but I'm not sure there is a solution (at least an easy one)," Brayton writes in an email. "Students need to recognize that these skills and ideas need to stay with them through adulthood, but that's easier said than done - we all fall into this trap."

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As the national attention to fake news and the debate over what to do about it continue, one place many are looking for solutions is in the classroom. Since a recent Stanford study showed that students at practically all grade levels can't determine fake news from the real stuff, the push to teach media literacy has gained new momentum.

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How do we teach kids across the grades to read responsibly?

Close attention to an author's words - the responsibility a reader shows to the text - implies and requires a responsibility to oneself as well as the words on the page.

That responsibility consists not only of a willingness to acknowledge and defend one's own thoughts and values, but to change our thinking when evidence or reason dictates.

A second grader, who read a text about the critical importance of bees in the food chain, adamantly contended, "I don't like bees because they sting. We don't need them." His strong feelings about bees led him to dismiss what he might have learned if he had read more responsibly.

Equally irresponsible is the third grader who read about climate change and responded, "I don't believe in it. My friend said it isn't real." If that child wants to argue with the science presented in the article, that's one thing. But to dismiss the article because it contradicts what a friend has previously stated is not responsible reading.

Responsibility to Oneself

Our middle grades students are not too young to learn to respect both the words on the page and their own thoughts and values. We seldom have difficulty persuading them to hang on tightly to their own ideas. They come to class, too often, ready to assert that whatever they think, whatever they have come to believe, is flatly, simply, indisputably true and correct.

They are often much more willing to defend their thoughts than to reconsider and perhaps modify them. And they should, of course, defend and protect what is reasoned and defensible. But to hold on to ideas when evidence and reason suggest that a change is sensible is to fail to be responsible to oneself. Somehow, we need to teach them to value change. Not change for change's sake, but change that results from more information, a richer understanding, a sharpened perspective.

To assert that the text says what it does not say, or that it does not say what it, in fact, does say, is to deny themselves the opportunity to think or to learn."

They should begin learning, as early as possible, not to misrepresent the text. To do so is to fail in their responsibility to the text, certainly, but even more significantly it is to fail in their responsibility to themselves. To assert that the text says what it does not say, or that it does not say what it, in fact, does say, is to deny themselves the opportunity to think or to learn.

Regardless of their age, students are not too young to learn to defend their position when it is defensible and to change it when new information, insight, or reasoning persuades them.

Responsibility to Others

The apparent increase in what has come to be called "fake news" makes the issue of responsibility to others even more important. It has perhaps always been easy to allow ourselves to be led astray by inaccurate or dishonest texts, especially when our emotions are aroused.

If we find that a text angers us, or, on the other hand, greatly pleases us, then we are likely to react quickly, perhaps without checking to see if either the anger or the pleasure is warranted. Now, however, not only can we be led astray by irresponsible texts, but we have the capacity, through social media, to help that text lead hundreds or thousands of others astray.

The simple act of retweeting or sharing something online can vastly compound and extend the damage.

News: Fake or Real?

We could spend chapters discussing the differences between news that is reported and news that is invented, in parsing the difference between false and fake. We could take up the struggles that social media sites now face as they decide how to avoid promoting fake news without acting as self-appointed censors.

Our right to free speech is a valued freedom in this country, and any group that decides to ban this news or that news because the site is deemed "fake" will face scrutiny. The lines between satire, bias, humor, falsehood, and deceit, and how a text is labeled, will grow blurrier as news sources worry more about high ratings than reliable reporting.

Satire has, of course, been a part of our discourse for a long time, and most of us have probably had the unsettling experience of momentarily being taken in by something in The Onion or by a Borowitz tongue-in-cheek column. There is some satisfaction in seeing through the satirist's invention to the truth that lies beneath it or behind it. The satirist expects the reader to be sharp enough to see the joke, recognize the exaggeration and invention, laugh at the humor in it all, and not be corrupted or misled by the fictitious elements.

Fake news, however, seems to have gone one or two steps further. It has moved across the line from humorous exaggeration intended to amuse and promote thought, into lies and deceptions quite likely intended to make the author money by inviting readers to click on the site and therefore attracting advertisers (Dewey, 2014; Silverman, 2016). Where the writer of satire relies on the reader's intelligence and skepticism, the writer of fake news seems to rely instead on the reader's gullibility and laziness.

Whatever the writer's motivations may be, the reader clearly bears the responsibility for avoiding gullibility and laziness. If the reader is taken in by invented news stories, he has obviously failed himself. And if he participates in circulating them, through sharing, reacting, and commenting, then he has failed in his responsibility to others.

Social Media and the News

Responsible reading of the news is more critical now than ever before because so much of the news we all read comes to us from social media sites. In 2016, 62 percent of U.S. adults reported they get at least some of their news from social media, with 18 percent saying all their news comes from social media (Pew Research Center, 2016).

We know there are days when we are part of that 18 percent. We're fast out the door in the morning, quick into a school with kids or a workshop with teachers, then off to an airplane to do it again the next day in another city. If the plane has an Internet connection, we log on and try to catch up on what's been happening in the world. Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter become our window to the universe.

On those days, we've discovered that there was a missing Red Rump Tarantula in Brooklyn; that Tim Horton's will stop serving pork due to Muslim demands; that Pope Francis endorsed Trump for President; that a protester at a Trump rally was paid $3,500. All of those stories, all of them, were fake. They were indeed "stories."

We both fell for one of those stories as we wondered just what would happen when that Red Rump Tarantula had her babies, which was the reason the owner gave for posting the warning signs about her throughout a certain area of Brooklyn.

On social media sites, the "news" is quickly disseminated. We may see that 3.5K have shared it, another 1K have commented, and that it's trending. Surely all those people can't be duped. This story must be the real thing. The danger in assuming that the story is real means we must put more effort into the reading of news; we must work harder, something that's tough to do at the end of a long day.

But we can't look at a news item and presume truth. Instead, we must come to news ready to sort, to cull, to mull, to test, to confirm, to question, to challenge, to discard-and that's in addition to just reading the content. If we don't, we find ourselves wondering if that escaped tarantula in Brooklyn could find itself in Texas or Florida. If fake news writers are counting on people to be dumb, then we must be smart. We must muster the stamina to be responsible.

Helping Kids Spot Fake News

Perhaps rather than wondering which story we should approach skeptically-this one yes, that one no-we might teach our readers to do three things as they look at any news stories, especially when they begin to look at stories online. Let's teach them to ask themselves:

How does it look?

What does it say?

How does it make me feel?

This anchor chart from our book Disrupting Thinking can help kids keep these 3 Big Questions in mind:
✻ How Does It Look?
When we ask kids to think about how a story looks, we want them checking out the headlines, the photos, and the URL. All caps in headlines, or headlines filled with extreme language, photos that present unlikely information, and URLs that don't end in .com, .gov, .edu, .org, or .net are worth reconsidering. For example, the URL abcnews.com.co takes us to a source of fake news. That ".co" ending should raise a red flag. A quick search of "how to identify fake URLs" will show you several articles that help you learn to identify fake website addresses.
✻ What Does It Say?
When we ask students to think about what the news story says, we want them to ask themselves questions about the topic, about the language, and about the author. If the topic doesn't seem credible, it might not be. We should have realized that a story about a lost pregnant tarantula just didn't seem right. Or if the language is extreme, then there's probably a problem. And if the author can't be found or there's a name but you can't find out information about the author, think twice before sharing.
✻ How Does It Make You Feel?
Finally, when we ask students to think about how the article makes them feel, we want them to be aware of particular responses: If it makes them excessively angry, scared, or, on the other hand, reaffirmed and smug, then they ought to do some checking before sharing.

When students begin to read news stories wondering how it looks, what it says, and how it makes them feel, we tell them that if any response raises a concern, then the first thing they should do is step away from the share button!

Next, they should look to see if other news sources are reporting the same information. If not, then they should not trust the story. Or, they can head to a source such as Snopes.com to see if the information can be verified.

Until we teach students to read responsibly, we run the risk of being a nation of readers who not only harm themselves, but potentially harm others as they share not just misinformation but blatant lies.

Teacher Turn and Talk

How much are you influenced by fake news? What's happening in your school to help teach your students how to critically evaluate news sources?

Would you say that the spread of fake news is a threat to our democracy?

______________

Kylene Beers and Robert Probst are co-authors of a new book from Scholastic, Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters.

Kylene is an award-winning educator and the author of When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do; Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading; Elements of Literature, and many other books. In 2008-2009, she served as President of the National Council of Teachers of English and was the editor of the national literacy journal Voices from the Middle. Most recently Kylene served as the Senior Reading Advisor to the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Robert is an author and consultant to schools nationally and internationally. He speaks to administrators and teachers on literacy improvement, particularly issues surrounding struggling readers and meeting standards. Bob is Professor Emeritus of English Education at Georgia State University and has served as a research fellow for Florida International University. He co-authored Notice and Note with Kylene.
The article is excerpted from Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst and reprinted with permission from Scholastic.

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Beers/Probst: Fake News & Responsible Reading

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How do we teach kids across the grades to read responsibly? Close attention to an author's words - the responsibility a reader shows to the text - implies and requires a responsibility to oneself as well as the words on the page.

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As part of our efforts to combat fake news, we've compiled a list of websites that we know have carried fake or satirical articles. We hope it will serve as a reference for readers who may come across unfamiliar websites.

This is not an exhaustive list. We will continue to update this list with more sites as we write about them.

FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to help identify and label fake or satirical stories, which are flagged by readers on the social media network. We have instructions on how to flag those suspect stories. Our articles debunking them can be found on our " Fake News " page.

Other resources include our special report and accompanying video on how to spot fake news.
America's Last Line of Defense
The website thelastlineofdefense.org provides this disclaimer on the " About Us " page of the website:

DISCLAIMER: The Resistance may include information from sources that may or may not be reliable and facts that don't necessarily exist. All articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney. Pictures that represent actual people should be considered altered and not in any way real.

Newslo/Politicops.com
The Newslo family of sites, which includes politicops.com, publishes what it calls "News/Satire." Newslo articles contain "show facts" and "hide facts" buttons. Generally, the "show facts" button highlights the first part of the story, which is often lifted from a reputable news outlet. The rest of the story is fabricated.

The " About Us " page on politicops.com says:

JUST ENOUGH NEWS... Newslo is the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the web. Readers come to us for a unique brand of entertainment and information that is enhanced by features like our fact-button, which allows readers to find what is fact and what is satire.

Newslo's "No Need to Satirize" brings you completely factual stories that are so ridiculous, they don't need our trademark touch. Whenever you see #NNTS, you're reading COMPLETELY real news that only seems too absurd to be true.

While Newslo articles are clearly labeled satirical, we have found that several other websites republish Newslo articles without labeling the stories as satire and without providing the hide/show facts buttons for readers. This is part of the problem with "fake news." Stories that are intended as satire circulate without proper labeling.
USPOLN or U.S. Political News
USPOLN, short for U.S. Political News, calls itself a "hybrid News/Satire platform." Its "About Us" page says its content "may include information from sources that may or may not be reliable and facts that don't necessarily exist" and "these articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney."

Unfortunately, USPOLN, which can be found at uspoln.com, does not label its articles as satire. For example, we wrote that USPOLN picked up an article from politicops.com without labeling the article as satire and without providing the "show facts" and "hide facts" options given to readers on politicops.com.
Freedom Crossroads
Freedomcrossroads.us provides this disclaimer on its " About Us " page:

Freedom Crossroads uses facts that don't exist and relies more on imagination than the truth. In fact, there is likely no truth at all in what you will read here. All of our articles are basically a crock of doody and should be considered satirical whimsies for today's aging conservative. All people, places, names and images should be considered fictitious or fictitious representations.

Conservative Nation
Consnation.com has a disclaimer that says: "All the information on this website is published in good faith and for general information purpose only. Conservative Nation does not make any warranties about the completeness, reliability, and accuracy of this information."
USA Politics Today
The website usapoliticstoday.com often lifts its content from other websites. The site contains a disclaimer at the bottom of each page that says, "USA Politics Today is not responsible for the content of external sites."
Clear Politics
The website clear-politics.com contains a disclaimer that says: "All the information on this website is published in good faith and for general information purpose only. www.clear-politics.com does not make any warranties about the completeness, reliability, and accuracy of this information."

This site should not to be confused with Real Clear Politics, a legitimate news site that can be found at realclearpolitics.com.
London Web News
Londonwebnews.com contains a disclaimer that says the site makes "no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability, or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services or related graphics and images contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk."
The Postillon
The-postillon.com says on its FAQ page that "everything you can read here is satire and therefore all made-up. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental."
Teddy Stick
Teddystick.com does not contain a disclaimer, instead describing its content as "fact-driven articles that focus on issues that matter."
The Federalist Tribune
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Empire News
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USA Television
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The Rightists
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American News
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Maine Republic Email Alert
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USA Daily Post
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The Examiner
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Websites that Post Fake and Satirical Stories - FactCheck.org

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As part of our efforts to combat fake news, we've compiled a list of websites that we know have carried fake or satirical articles. We hope it will serve as a reference for readers who may come across unfamiliar websites. This is not an exhaustive list.

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Teaching Kids News - Readable, teachable news.

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Test your ability to identify fake news.

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PBS Idea Channel

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TED Talk

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3 ways to fix a broken news industry | Lara Setrakian

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Something is very wrong with the news industry. Trust in the media has hit an all-time low; we're inundated with sensationalist stories, and consistent, high-quality reporting is scarce, says journalist and entrepreneur Lara Setrakian. She shares three ways we can fix the news and make the complex issues of our time easier to understand.

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Infographic evaluating news sources across the political spectrum

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How Your Politics Relate to Your Media Habits

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How Your Politics Relate to Your Media Habits

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Pew research study.

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Pew Research Center's Journalism Project

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When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds. There is little overlap in the news sources they turn to and trust. And whether discussing politics online or with friends, they are more likely than others to interact with like-minded individuals, according to a new Pew Research Center study.

The project - part of a year-long effort to shed light on political polarization in America - looks at the ways people get information about government and politics in three different settings: the news media, social media and the way people talk about politics with friends and family. In all three areas, the study finds that those with the most consistent ideological views on the left and right have information streams that are distinct from those of individuals with more mixed political views - and very distinct from each other.

These cleavages can be overstated. The study also suggests that in America today, it is virtually impossible to live in an ideological bubble. Most Americans rely on an array of outlets - with varying audience profiles - for political news. And many consistent conservatives and liberals hear dissenting political views in their everyday lives.

Yet as our major report on political polarization found, those at both the left and right ends of the spectrum, who together comprise about 20% of the public overall, have a greater impact on the political process than do those with more mixed ideological views. They are the most likely to vote, donate to campaigns and participate directly in politics. The five ideological groups in this analysis (consistent liberals, mostly liberals, mixed, mostly conservatives and consistent conservatives) are based on responses to 10 questions about a range of political values. That those who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions have different ways of informing themselves about politics and government is not surprising. But the depth of these divisions - and the differences between those who have strong ideological views and those who do not - are striking.

Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives:

Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.

Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.

Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.

Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.

By contrast, those with consistently liberal views:

Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some - like NPR and the New York Times- that others use far less.

Express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. NPR, PBS and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals.

Are more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or "defriend" someone on a social network - as well as to end a personal friendship - because of politics.

Are more likely to follow issue-based groups, rather than political parties or candidates, in their Facebook feeds.

Those with down-the-line conservative and liberal views do share some common ground; they are much more likely than others to closely follow government and political news. This carries over to their discussions of politics and government. Nearly four-in-ten consistent conservatives (39%) and 30% of consistent liberals tend to drive political discussions - that is, they talk about politics often, say others tend to turn to them for information rather than the reverse, and describe themselves as leaders rather than listeners in these kinds of conversations. Among those with mixed ideological views, just 12% play a similar role.

The Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center released a major analysis of changes in the American electorate titled Political Polarization in the American Public. The study, based on interviews with more than 10,000 adults nationwide, tracked the growing ideological consistency and partisan antipathy expressed by Americans, and how these views correlate with people's willingness to compromise, relationships with friends and family, and even preferences about where to live.

This report is based on a follow-up survey, about where people get political news and information, conducted among the 88% of panel members with online access. While the picture drawn might be slightly different if those without internet access had been included, this report provides a thorough look at political information consumption by the large online population.

It is important to note, though, that those at either end of the ideological spectrum are not isolated from dissenting views about politics. Nearly half (47%) of across-the-board conservatives - and 59% of across-the-board liberals - say they at least sometimes disagree with one of their closest political discussion partners.

For those closer to the middle of the ideological spectrum, learning about politics, or discussing it with friends and family, is a less of a focus. When they do follow politics, their main news sources include CNN, local TV and Fox News, along with Yahoo News and Google News, which aggregate stories from a wide assortment of outlets; these U.S. adults see more of a mix of views in social media and are less likely to be aware of their friends'political leanings.

This study, the latest in a series of reports on political polarization, is based on an online survey conducted March 19-April 29, 2014 with 2,901 members of the Pew Research Center's new American Trends Panel - a panel recruited from a telephone survey of 10,013 adults conducted earlier this year.

Among the key findings:

Media Sources: Nearly Half of Consistent Conservatives Cite Fox News

When it comes to choosing a media source for political news, conservatives orient strongly around Fox News. Nearly half of consistent conservatives (47%) name it as their main source for government and political news, as do almost a third (31%) of those with mostly conservative views. No other sources come close.

Consistent liberals, on the other hand, volunteer a wider range of main sources for political news - no source is named by more than 15% of consistent liberals and 20% of those who are mostly liberal. Still, consistent liberals are more than twice as likely as web-using adults overall to name NPR (13% vs. 5%), MSNBC (12% vs. 4%) and the New York Times (10% vs. 3%) as their top source for political news.

Among the large group of respondents with mixed ideological views, CNN (20%) and local TV (16%) are top sources; Fox News (8%), Yahoo News (7%) and Google News (6%) round out their top five sources.

Trust and Distrust: Liberals Trust Many, Conservatives Trust Few

At least as important as where people turn for news is whose news they trust. And here, the ideological differences are especially stark.

Respondents were asked whether they had heard of each of the 36 outlets listed in the accompanying graphic. For those they had heard of, they were asked about their trust - or distrust - in each source.

Liberals, overall, trust a much larger mix of news outlets than others do. Of the 36 different outlets considered, 28 are more trusted than distrusted by consistent liberals. Just eight earn higher shares of distrust than trust. Still, among those eight, the levels of distrust can be high: fully 81% of consistent liberals distrust Fox News, and 75% distrust the Rush Limbaugh Show.

Among consistent conservatives, by contrast, there are 24 sources that draw more distrust than trust. The same is true for 15 sources among those with mostly conservative views. And, of the eight outlets more trusted than distrusted by consistent conservatives, all but one, on balance, are distrusted by consistent liberals.

Also at play here is the degree to which people are more familiar with certain news sources than others. Some outlets such as CNN, ABC News and Fox News, are recognized by at least nine-in-ten respondents, meaning that more respondents offer a view of these outlets one way or the other. Outlets currently occupying more niche markets, such as Politico, the Economist or BuzzFeed, are known by only about a third of respondents. Thus, while they may elicit strong views in one direction, the share of respondents weighing in is relatively small.

This section of the report looks in detail at news audiences and trust and distrust of outlets across ideological groups. For more on how the news sources were selected, see Appendix B.

Social Media: Conservatives More Likely to Have Like-Minded Friends

In the growing social media space, most users encounter a mix of political views. But consistent conservatives are twice as likely as the typical Facebook user to see political opinions on Facebook that are mostly in line with their own views (47% vs. 23%). Consistent liberals, on average, hear a somewhat wider range of views than consistent conservatives - about a third (32%) mainly see posts in line with their own opinions.

But that doesn't mean consistent liberals necessarily embrace contrasting views. Roughly four-in-ten consistent liberals on Facebook (44%) say they have blocked or defriended someone on social media because they disagreed with something that person posted about politics. This compares with 31% of consistent conservatives and just 26% of all Facebook users who have done the same.

Consistent liberals who pay attention to politics on Facebook are also more likely than others to "like" or follow issue-based groups: 60% do this, compared with 46% of consistent conservatives and just a third (33%) of those with mixed views. And both the left and the right are more likely than others to follow political parties or elected officials: 49% of consistent conservatives and 42% of consistent liberals do so, compared with 29% of Facebook users overall.

Talking Politics: Dissenting Views Penetrate, but Less Frequently for the Ideologically Consistent

In personal conversations about politics, those on the right and left are more likely to largely hear views in line with their own thinking.

While only a quarter (25%) of respondents with mixed ideological views say most of their close friends share their own political views, that is true of roughly half (52%) of consistent liberals and two-thirds (66%) of consistent conservatives. And, when those who talk about politics are asked to name up to three people they most often talk to about politics, half (50%) of consistent conservatives name only individuals they describe as also being conservative - outpacing the 31% of consistent liberals who name only liberals.

At the same time, consistent liberals are more likely to stop talking to someone because of politics. Roughly a quarter (24%) have done so, compared with 16% of consistent conservatives and around 10% of those with more mixed political views.

Still, a solid portion of even the most ideologically-aligned respondents encounter some political disagreement with their close discussion partners. Nearly half (47%) of consistent conservatives who talk about politics name one or more discussion partners with whom they disagree at least some of the time. This figure rises to more than half (59%) of consistent liberals and even larger shares of those with mostly liberal and ideologically-mixed political views (79% each).

Media Outlets by the Ideological Composition of Their Audience

Ideological differences in media source preferences result in distinct audience profiles for many media outlets. Many sources, such as the Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News have audiences that are, on average, ideologically similar to the average web respondent.

Reflecting liberals' use of a greater number of media sources, there are more outlets whose readers, watchers and listeners fall to the left of the average web respondent than to the right. At the same time, a handful of outlets have audiences that are more conservative than the average respondent.

Fox News sits to the right of the midpoint, but is not nearly as far right as several other sources, such as the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. A closer look at the audience breakdowns reveals why: While consistent conservatives get news from Fox News at very high rates, many of those with less conservative views also use Fox News. By contrast, the audiences for Limbaugh and Beck are overwhelmingly conservative.

By comparison, the average consumer of the Wall Street Journal sits very close to the typical survey respondent, but the range of Journal readers is far broader because it appeals to people on both the left and the right. As a result, while respondents overall cluster toward the center of the ideological spectrum, the Journal's audience is relatively evenly distributed across the continuum: 20% are consistent liberals, 21% mostly liberal, 24% mixed, 22% mostly conservative and 13% consistent conservative.

For a more detailed look at the ideological composition of each source's audience, see the Pew Research Center's interactive database.

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When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds. There is little overlap in the news sources they turn to and trust. And whether discussing politics online or with friends, they are more likely than others to interact with like-minded individuals, according to a new Pew Research Center study.

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Questionnaire from Checkology to help students identify fake news.

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Multiple perspectives on current news topics

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AllSides for Schools helps educators prepare students to participate thoughtfully in democracy - and in life.

AllSides for Schools equips educators with tools to build news literacy skills in the classroom. Teachers can use our balanced news, bias resources, and dialogue opportunities to instill the civic readiness students need to participate in democracy and build resilient communities.

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AllSides for Schools gives educators tools, resources, information, and curricular guidance to help students build skills in bias awareness, news literacy, and dialogue across differences.

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Stephen Colbert talks about the truth

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The Word - Truthiness - The Colbert Report (Video Clip) | Comedy Central

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Stephen explains the concept of truthiness and makes a pledge to his audience.

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How your political views affect your Facebook feed

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See Liberal Facebook and Conservative Facebook, Side by Side

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Living in a filter bubble.

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The 2016 election took place under the spectre of a bubble. Not the subprime mortgage lending bubble that shaped the 2008 election, but the "filter bubble". Tens of millions of American voters gets their news on Facebook, where highly personalized news feeds dish up a steady stream of content that reinforces users' pre-existing beliefs.

Facebook users are increasingly sheltered from opposing viewpoints - and reliable news sources - and the viciously polarized state of our national politics appears to be one of the results.

Criticism of the filter bubble, which gained steam after the UK's surprising Brexit vote, has reached a new level of urgency in the wake of Donald Trump's upset victory, despite Mark Zuckerberg's denial it had any influence.

To test the effects of political polarization on Facebook we asked ten US voters - five conservative and five liberal - to agree to take a scroll on the other side during the final month of the campaign.

We created two Facebook accounts from scratch. "Rusty Smith", our right-wing avatar, liked a variety of conservative news sources, organizations, and personalities, from the Wall Street Journal and The Hoover Institution to Breitbart News and Bill O'Reilly. "Natasha Smith", our left-wing persona, preferred The New York Times, Mother Jones, Democracy Now and Think Progress. Rusty liked Tim Tebow and the NRA. Natasha liked Colin Kaepernick and 350.org.

Our liberals were given log-ins to the conservative feed, and vice versa, and we asked our participants to limit their news consumption as much as possible to the feed for the 48 hours following the third debate, the reopening of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and the election.

Not all of our participants made it through to election day. "You might as well have been waterboarding a brother," said one of the participants, Alphonso Pines, after his first exposure to the right-wing feed.

But eight of our bubble-busters made multiple forays into the Facebook feed and were interviewed three or four times - one even said the experience influenced his final decision. Here's how it impacted them all:

Inside the bubble

From Utah to St Louis, and Georgia to San Francisco, most of our participants were aware that they lived in a bubble.

"Twelve people have shared a story with me about the Hillary Clinton bus dumping human waste into the sewer system," said Trent Loos, a farmer and radio host from central Nebraska. "I never see positive stuff about Hillary Clinton. I didn't know that existed."

Nato Green, a comedian and writer who describes his political orientation as "somewhere to the left of Che Guevara", describes a similarly sheltered existence.

I never see positive stuff about Hillary Clinton. I didn't know that existed

Trent Loos, farmer and radio host

"I find regular Americans incredibly exotic," the native San Franciscan said. "I know Jill Stein people, and I know 'don't vote' people, but I don't know Trump people."

Several participants said that they sought out opposing viewpoints outside of Facebook, by watching Fox News (for a liberal) or reading High Country News (for a conservative), but most had a generally one-sided experience within Facebook's news feed.

"If I got any Trump supporters on my page, they're in the closet," said Pines, a retired union organizer and liberal who lives in Smyrna, Georgia.

'Like reading a book by a fool'

If there was one thing that our participants agreed on, it was that the Facebook feed "the other side" reads is largely wrong.

"It's like reading a book by a fool," said Pines. "It's hard to read something you know is a lie."

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Andra Constantin, a conservative 37-year-old project manager in the construction industry. Photograph: Photo courtesy of Andra Constantin

Another liberal, Nikki Moungo from St Louis county, Missouri, went a step further: "It's like being locked into a room full of those suffering from paranoid delusions," she said.

Loos said that he found the left-wing Facebook feed was too "confined" and he was frustrated by the liberal media's attempts to "spin" and "justify" every negative story about Clinton.

Andra Constantin, a conservative project manager from Westchester County, New York, was frustrated by "this whole big brainwashing push to save the world from the horrible climate change".

Both Constantin and Green agreed that a conservative Facebook feed in the run up to the election had more diversity of opinions than a liberal one, largely because Republicans were divided on supporting Trump while liberals were generally united behind Clinton.

"I didn't see the issues being discussed," Constantin said of the liberal feed. "Even though we can be hateful and nasty, at both ends of the conservative side we're talking about the issues a bit more."

When Green returned to his regular liberal feed after the third debate, he felt completely out of the loop with his cohort's topics of conversation. "I logged in and I was like - bad hombres, nasty women, what is everyone talking about?"

'They hate me'

For several of our participants, reading the alternative Facebook feed was not just surprising, but hurtful.

"It's hard for me to read some of it," said Pines, who is black. "It's just a racist kind of thing, and I don't think it's cleverly disguised." Pines was particularly pained by the way in which Obama was portrayed by the right-wing sources, which he described as "code" and "dog whistles".

Pam Tau Lee, a retired community organizer and activist from San Francisco, also had difficulty stomaching the right-wing feed.

"Everything that they are saying is bad, I fall under that category," said the fourth-generation Chinese-American. "The hateful stuff: that's me. They hate me and my community and what I stand for."

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Pam Tau Lee, a retired community organizer from San Francisco. Photograph: Courtesy of Pam Tau Lee

Kathleen Matz, who owns a pet care service in Oakland, California, found the "misogyny" on sites like Breitbart "hurtful".

"I just stopped. I couldn't look at it anymore," she said.

But it wasn't only the liberals who found the experience painful.

"I'm seeing a lot more hate from the liberal side," said Constantin. "It's all about how much of a horrible, fascist, racist, misogynist Trump is."

On her own feed, Constantin found herself winnowing down her friends in order to avoid arguments.

"I did unfollow a lot of friends because I didn't want to feel enticed to correct what they were saying and get in a fight," she said.

"Honestly, I hated it," said Janalee Tobias, a longtime conservative activist and member of Mormons for Trump from South Jordan, Utah. "I'm seeing a psychiatrist trying to get over the shock and the hate from the left," she joked. "I thought this would be easier for me to handle, because I'm considered pretty open minded."

Facebook

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Bursting the Facebook bubble: we asked voters on the left and right to swap feeds

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The 2016 election took place under the spectre of a bubble. Not the subprime mortgage lending bubble that shaped the 2008 election, but the "filter bubble". Tens of millions of American voters gets their news on Facebook, where highly personalized news feeds dish up a steady stream of content that reinforces users' pre-existing beliefs.

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Michelle Luhtala: Teaching Digital Literacy March 22, 2017  on edWeb

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Youtube. Google Images Downloader. Digital Literacy. Newsmap. FlackCheck.org - A project of Annenberg Classroom. Patterns of Deception. RADAR Framework. 5ws. 1.

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Do our friends affect what we believe?

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Over the last several years, Facebook has been participating-unintentionally-in the erosion of democracy.

The social network may feel like a modern town square, but thanks to its tangle of algorithms, it's nothing like the public forums of the past. The company determines, according to its interests and those of its shareholders, what we see and learn on its social network. The result has been a loss of focus on critical national issues, an erosion of civil disagreement, and a threat to democracy itself.

Facebook is just one part-though a large part-of the Big Data economy, one built on math-powered applications that are based on choices made by fallible human beings. Many of the algorithms built for the Big Data economy contain mistakes that can undermine solutions to the problems they hope to solve.

In 2008, when the economy crashed, I witnessed the power of these " Weapons of Math Destruction " firsthand from my desk at a hedge fund in New York City. Since then, I have used my training as a mathematician to study how these algorithms can influence our lives, and what I've found has not always been positive

In many cases, WMDs define their own reality to justify their results. Facebook's algorithm, for example, contains such a feedback loop: Engaging content is shared more, causing the algorithm to find more content like it to show to Facebook users. In some cases, it shows people photos of their best friend's newborn. In others, it serves links to strangely compelling articles of dubious origin and veracity.

Data scientists working for Facebook are singularly focused on extending the length of time each of us remains "engaged" on the platform. Facebook does not optimize for truth, for learning, or for civil conversation. They measure success in clicks, likes, and comments, which happen whether or not we are having high quality conversations. The more engagement, the more data they can use to sell advertisements.

So far, Facebook has made some small steps toward vetting the content of our newsfeeds for truthfulness and holding its advertisers to reasonable standards. "We have always taken this seriously, we understand how important the issue is for our community and we are committed to getting this right," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement a few weeks ago. However, based on his public statements, those efforts will likely rely heavily on algorithms and user reporting, which can both be gamed by bad actors. It's too early to tell how effective those measures will be.

But what we do know is that as long as content on Facebook resonates with people, the platform's algorithm ensures that it thrives.

Getting Out the Vote

Facebook's reach is expansive. As I write this, about two-thirds of American adults have a profile on Facebook. They spend an average of 50 minutes a day on the site, and 60% of them count on Facebook to deliver at least some of their political news. Young people, especially, get their news from Facebook, and they are particularly bad at distinguishing real news sources from fake ones.

The platform's reach doesn't necessarily translate into influence, but fortunately Facebook has demonstrated that it can influence the democratic process. During the 2010 and 2012 elections, Facebook conducted experiments to hone a tool they called the "voter megaphone." The idea was to encourage people to spread word that they had voted. By sprinkling people's news feeds with "I Voted" updates, Facebook was encouraging Americans-more than 61 million of them at the time-to carry out their civic duty and make their voices heard.
Facebook can use knowledge gained through experiments to influence people's actions.
The messages that Facebook users received included a display of photos of six of the user's Facebook friends, randomly selected, who had clicked the "I Voted" button. The researchers also studied two control groups, each numbering around 600,000. One group saw the "I Voted" campaign, but without the pictures of friends. The other received nothing at all.

By posting about people's voting behavior, the site used peer pressure to encourage people to vote. Other studies have shown that the quiet satisfaction of carrying out a civic duty is less likely to move people than the possible judgment of friends and neighbors.

Within hours, Facebook harvested information from tens of millions of people-or more-measuring the impact that their words and shared links had on each other. And it demonstrated how it could use that knowledge to influence people's actions, which in this case happened to be voting.

People paid much more attention when the "I Voted" updates came from friends, and they were more likely to share those updates. About 20% of the people who saw that their friends had voted also clicked on the "I Voted" button. Among those who didn't get the button from friends, only 18% did. We can't be sure that all the people who clicked the button actually voted or that those who didn't click it stayed home. But assuming they did, researchers estimated that their campaign had increased turnout by 340,000 people. To put that number in perspective, just 80,000 votes decided the most recent presidential election. In other words, by tweaking its algorithm and selecting the news that we see, Facebook can influence the political system.

It's not all Facebook's fault, of course. We pick our own friends, and we contribute to our own miseducation by keeping our friendships narrow, unfriending people who disagree with us, being disagreeable ourselves, and clicking on and sharing stories that appeal to our biases without fact-checking.

When we only talk to our friends, we end up becoming more and more partisan as loud, emphatic voices overwhelm those who are less sure; echo chambers do not lend themselves to a broadening of minds. Also, we tend to talk on and on about the same topics in the same ways rather than a considering a broad range of perspectives, as the Wall Street Journal showed us on their "Blue Feed, Red Feed " experiment which examined the content of conservative versus liberal Facebook environments.

One way of testing how Facebook's algorithms influence the quality of these feeds is to have people switch feeds for a while. This is exactly the experiment conducted by the Guardian, as described in the article " Bursting the Facebook Bubble." One participant described the experience as being close to waterboarding, while another mentioned that he hadn't known positive coverage of Hillary Clinton even existed. But the most important perspective, coming from both sides, was that the other side was being given wrong information. This was described by a participant as "like reading a book by a fool."

Thanks in part to filtering and personalization by sites like Facebook and others, our information has become deeply unbalanced, skewed, and has lost its mooring. Where we used to have serious newspaper editorial teams sifting fact from opinion, we now have Facebook algorithms optimizing on engagement and ad revenue. Where we used to have contextualized and consistent reporting, we now have decontextualized feeds that put real news from the Washington Post on the same footing as fake news from AmericanNews.com.

Which is not to say that old-school newspapers did a perfect job, but their reputation-and thus subscription and advertiser revenue-relied on getting the facts right. That's more than we can say about the modern made-for-Facebook fake news sites.

The Media's Quandary

Come to think of it, if we're complaining about bad information coming from bad news, shouldn't we stop blaming Facebook and instead blame the media?

It's tempting, but the story isn't that simple. The media has been under siege for years by social media-and in particular by Facebook. It's a complicated story, but the short version is that all newspapers, even big ones like the New York Times, depend crucially on Facebook for traffic. Without the traffic from Facebook, their readership would plummet.

In order to get that traffic, they allow and encourage people to share the stories from their website via the ubiquitous Facebook button, which carries with it a set of code that allows Facebook access to masses of user data on the New York Times and other publications' sites. The "share" button and the data it gathers further bolsters Facebook's position largest and most knowledgeable targeted advertising platform on the web.

This dependency on Facebook, in the meantime, creates incentives within media companies to serve up the most clicked and shared story. Often, those stories are not what we would traditionally think of as quality journalism.

For publishers of journalism, there is no viable alternative: Facebook is in charge, at least for now, so media companies have to follow their lead.

Perils of Micro-Targeting

It's not just the media that has been upended by Facebook, but also political campaigns. Unlike newspapers, though, campaigns have been able to nimbly adapt to this new era by deploying micro-targeted political ads aimed at tightly defined groups of people. These ads earned Facebook upwards of $1 billion this election cycle.

The targeting begins even before the ads are run. In late 2015, the Guardian reported that a political data firm, Cambridge Analytica, had paid academics in the U.K. to amass Facebook profiles of U.S. voters with demographic details and records of each user's "likes." They used this information to develop psychographic analyses of more than 40 million voters, ranking each on the scale of the "big five" personality traits, including openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Groups working with the Ted Cruz presidential campaign then used these studies to develop television commercials targeted for different types of voters, placing them in programming they'd be most likely to watch. When the Republican Jewish Coalition was meeting at the Venetian in Las Vegas in May, 2015, for instance, the Cruz campaign unleashed a series of Web-based advertisements visible only inside the hotel complex that emphasized Cruz's devotion to Israel and its security.
Micro-targeting has made it virtually impossible to hold political campaigns accountable.
According to a Bloomberg article, Cambridge Analytica used those same profiles of American voters at the very end of Trump's campaign to "bombard" them with Facebook ads. The messages were not exclusive to pro-Trump advertisements. The campaign also used a three-pronged approach to keep certain groups of people from the polls-"voter suppression," they called it. The targets were idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans, according to a Trump campaign official, and each group was sent ads designed to discourage them from voting. One of the ads targeted at suppressing the African American vote reportedly involved a South Park style animation entitled "Hillary Thinks African Americans are Super Predators."

Clinton's campaign ran a "get out the vote" micro-targeting campaign that heavily relied on Facebook's user data to encourage people to vote for the candidate. In one series of ads, they targeted people from Ohio aged 18-34 along with people in Pennsylvania and Florida who had an African-American "affinity," Facebook's proxy for race which is based on content users like and share. News of this campaign was reported by the New York Times, which built a browser add-on for readers to submit micro-targeted political ads to the paper.

Micro-targeting through the use of algorithms has made it virtually impossible to hold political campaigns accountable. A nosy journalist used to be able document how a politician's message changed from town to town simply by following a campaign and paying close attention. Now, that information is much harder to come by. Such transparency is a relic of the past.

End of Accountability?

As a thought experiment, what would the modern journalistic snoop have to do to hold politicians accountable? In today's data- and algorithm-driven era, it may not be possible because of the sheer amount of work required to fool the algorithms.

It is not enough simply to visit the candidate's web page, because they, too, use reams of data to automatically profile and target each visitor, weighing everything from their zip codes to the links they click on the page-even the photos they appear to look at.

It's also fruitless to create dozens of "fake" profiles to probe the myriad ways which campaigns target voters because the campaigns' systems are hard to fool. They associate each real voter with a wealth of deep, accumulated knowledge, including purchasing records, addresses, phone numbers, voting records, and even social security numbers and Facebook profiles. For a fake profile to convince the system it's real, each one would have to come with its own load of realistic looking data. Fabricating just one fake profile would require an enormous amount of work for a research project (and in the worst case scenario, it might get the investigator tangled up in fraud).

The depth of secrecy surrounding both political campaigns' targeted messaging and Facebook's algorithms has created a system that is easily exploited by fake, misleading, and manipulative information. It has become increasingly difficult for voters to carefully and rationally compare politicians on the issues.

For democracy to function, it needs elections, voters, candidates, and an informed public. The last is absolutely crucial to a healthy democracy. People need to be aware of what politicians actually think, what their plans are, and how they propose to fulfill their promises. It's the kind of information that's getting hard-maybe impossible-to come by in the modern Facebook world.
Portions of this article are based chapters in Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil and published by Crown Random House.

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Commentary: It's Facebook's algorithm vs. democracy, and so far the algorithm is winning - NOVA Next | PBS

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Over the last several years, Facebook has been participating-unintentionally-in the erosion of democracy. The social network may feel like a modern town square, but thanks to its tangle of algorithms, it's nothing like the public forums of the past. The company determines, according to its interests and those of its shareholders, what we see and learn on its social network.

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A 3 part lesson focused on ELLs adaptable for all

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A display of Google devices. Google said it would ban purveyors of fake news on the web from using its online advertising service, AdSense. Related Article Credit... Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Let us know how you approach current events in your E.L.L. classroom by posting a comment.

_________

Part One: Why Should Our Students Keep Up With The News?

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Begin by asking students: "Is it important to keep up with the news? If so, why? If not, why not?"

Wait time is important for all students, and particularly so for E.L.L.s. Give students a few minutes to think about your question and have them write down their responses. The Common Core Standards emphasize collaboration, which can mean having students work on their own, share their work to receive feedback from classmates, and then revise it to make it better.

Apply this concept in the lesson by having students share what they wrote in small groups. You might also provide them a few question-starters they can use to "dig deeper" ( I'm confused when you say ________. Can you elaborate?). As students revise after their discussions, invite them to share while you compile their responses on the whiteboard or document camera.

You might get answers like the ones I heard from my students:

"We need to know so we sound smart." "The world affects us, so we need to know so we're prepared."
"We want to be good citizens, so have to know what's going on." (Note: For follow-up lessons based on this response, teachers might want to explore two previous Learning Network posts for E.L.L.s, " Ideas For E.L.L.s: Civics and Citizenship and " Ideas For English Language Learner: What Does It Mean To Be A Citizen? ")
"Our friends will be impressed we know so much."

It's unlikely you'll get responses saying it's not important - especially after going through the process of collaboration. However, if you do, just list it along with the other positive ones.

For many American E.L.L. students, since they are immigrants or have families that include immigrants, you may get a response, as I did, like " They're trying to get rid of us. We need to know so we can protect ourselves." They may also realize that keeping abreast of the news is an important real-world skill when criminals often take advantage of those with language difficulties and lack of familiarity with U.S. laws via scams like these.

In addition, fake news can be used to inaccurately make immigrants targets of political blame - for example, the falsehood that there were three million illegal votes in the 2016 presidential election.

_________

Part Two: Where Should E.L.L. Students Get Their News?

After students have agreed that it's important to keep up-to-date with the news, ask them to take a minute and write down all the different places from which they get their news.

Remind them to include everything from specific newspapers and radio and television stations to social media sites, their friends and their relatives. As they call them out, make a class list. If some students list sites with less-than-reliable news, the teacher can list them and make a mental note to return to the list at the end of the lesson.

The teacher can quickly show on the computer projector additional places students might want to consider visiting for news, including The New York Times as well as sites, like those below, that are particularly accessible to English Language Learners. I've made two more complete lists, but here are my favorites (not in any order of preference):

* News in Levels and the Smithsonian's Tween Tribune provide articles about current events that can be read on multiple levels of text complexity depending on students' English proficiency.

* Learning English from the Voice of America provides texts and videos about current events that are also designed to help E.L.L.s learn English.

* Youngzine and the Newsround from the BBC both provide regularly updated news articles designed to be specifically more accessible to young readers.

* Newsmap and Newser both provide short news summaries in visually engaging formats.

The Learning Network also has a new feature suitable for many English-language learners called Picture Prompt. Each piece uses an arresting image from a news or feature story, summarizes it quickly, then poses questions about it and links back to the original story.

_________

Part Three: How Can Students Tell The Difference Between Fake News And Real News?

Briefly introduce the concept of "fake news" to students. (In our general lesson plan, Evaluating Sources in a 'Post-Truth' World: Ideas for Teaching and Learning About Fake News, we quote this article: "Narrowly defined, 'fake news' means a made-up article with an intention to deceive, often geared toward getting clicks. But the issue has become a political battering ram, and in the process, the definition of fake news has blurred." For E.L.L. students, however, you might just ask them if they have heard the term, and if so, what they think it means - then summarize just the first sentence of the Times story.)

Since it's likely that some students may have listed friends as their news sources, point out that their friends probably also get news from them, so they want to be sure they are not passing on anything unreliable. If they listed Facebook as a source, you can briefly talk about the widely-publicized problems that social media platform has had with fake news. You might also ask either or both of these core questions we pose in our general lesson plan:
* When have you or someone you know fallen for or shared fake or inaccurate news of some kind? * Why does it matter if we can't tell real news from fake news?

Explain that there are several ways to tell the difference between fake and real news, but point out it's still possible to be tricked even if you know them. We recommend using On the Media's guidelines, as shown in the image above. (You can listen to the whole show here for more detail, and find additional chapters in the group's clear and helpful "Breaking News Consumer's Handbook" here.) If any of the language here is too difficult for your students, you might recast it with easier vocabulary:

You can also use these Ten Questions for Fake News Detection from the News Literacy Project.

After applying these checks to an article, if students are still suspicious, they can do two things:

* Type the headline or topic of the story into a search engine to see if clearly legitimate news organizations like The New York Times or CNN host similar stories.

* Visit a fact-checking site like FactCheck.org, Snopes.com and Politifact.com to see if the story appears there, and how those sites rate that news.

Real or Fake? A Challenge

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The Syrian government, backed by Russia, announced on Thursday that a cease-fire agreement with Syrian rebels and Turkey would begin Friday. Syrians have mixed feelings about the truce. Credit Credit... Abd Doumany/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Next, show students two examples of a lede from a news story and ask them to write down - either on their paper or, ideally, on individual mini-whiteboards they can hold up - which one they think is real and which is fake. They should use the previous list to identify specific evidence that supports their choices.

_________
Example One: Syrian Government Announces Truce Backed by Russia and Turkey
Url: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/world/middleeast/syria-cease-fire.html
By Ben Hubbard and Neil MacFarquhar, Dec. 29, 2016

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A cease-fire agreement between Syria's government and weakened rebel forces that have been trying to topple it is scheduled to start on Friday, a potential turning point in a nearly six-year conflict that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and shredded every hope of resolution.
Example Two: Syrian Government Announces Truce - Plans Attack On U.S.
Url: http://www.cnn.com.co
The Syrian government announced plans to stop its country's civil war on Friday and attack the United States to take revenge against the U.S because it has supported Syrian rebels for many years.

Which do they think is the real story? Why? What specifically raised red flags for them in the fake story? What more could they do to verify which is fake and which is real? (Note to teachers: I made the second one up, and thus the URL isn't real.)

_________

Part Four: Understanding the Issues By Writing Fake and Real News
Explain to students that now it's time for them to apply what they have learned by writing their own fake news lede that uses some of the many characteristics of unreliable news they have just read about.

Tell them that a lede is the first line or paragraph of a news story that summarizes the most important information, and typically answers many, if not all, of the main news questions - Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? Using the Syria stories above, you can have students complete the Graphic Organizer for Creating or Analyzing a Lede sheet (pdf) to point out how both the fake and real ledes in the Syria stories answered most of those questions.

Then, invite students to choose any classroom-appropriate topic, such as news from the school or community, and a fake lede about it. If they choose something that is genuine news - for example, news from the front page of The Times or any other newspaper - have them use the graphic organizer to analyze the real story, then use a new version of the organizer to create their own fake one. If they use a local story, have them create two versions - a fake lede and a real lede.

For instance, many of my students chose to do something classroom-focused: " Mr. Ferlazzo announced on Monday that everyone would get an A and nobody had to go to class" began a fake story, while the real story was more accurately written as, "Mr. Ferlazzo announced on Monday that there would be a test on Friday and he expected everyone to study." Students in my E.L.L. history classes used famous news stories from the past to do this same exercise.

When they are finished, students can read their stories aloud in groups and challenge their classmates to say which is fake and which is real and, most importantly, why.

Note: If students had earlier identified any fake news sites when they shared where they got their news, this could be the time when the class could revisit that list of sites. The teacher could project that site and other ones students had identified on a screen and lead students in applying the fake and real news criteria to each one.

_________
How do you deal with current events in your E.L.L. classroom? Let us know in the comments, and if you use The New York Times, we'd love to hear your thoughts for our Reader Ideas column.

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Ideas for E.L.L.s: Finding Reliable Sources in a World of 'Fake News'

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Let us know how you approach current events in your E.L.L. classroom by posting a comment. _________ Part One: Why Should Our Students Keep Up With The News? Begin by asking students: "Is it important to keep up with the news? If so, why? If not, why not?"

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Fun ideas for teaching fake news

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As the national attention to fake news and the debate over what to do about it continue, one place many are looking for solutions is in the classroom.

Since a recent Stanford study showed that students at practically all grade levels can't determine fake news from the real stuff, the push to teach media literacy has gained new momentum. The study showed that while students absorb media constantly, they often lack the critical thinking skills needed to tell fake news from the real stuff.

Teachers are taking up the challenge to change that. NPR Ed put out a social media call asking how educators are teaching fake news and media literacy, and we got a lot of responses. Here's a sampling from around the country:
Fake news "Simon Says"
In Scott Bedley's version of Simon Says, it's not those two magic words that keep you in the game, but deciding correctly whether a news story is real or not.

To start off the game, Bedley sends his fifth-graders at Plaza Vista School in Irvine, Calif., an article to read on their laptops. He gives them about three minutes to make their decision - they have to read the story carefully, examine its source and use their judgment. Those who think the article is false, stand up. The "true" believers stay in their seats.

Bedley says he's been trying to teach his students for a while to look carefully at what they're reading and where it comes from. He's got a seven-point checklist his students can follow:

1. Do you know who the source is, or was it created by a common or well-known source? Example National Geographic, Discovery, etc.
2. How does it compare to what you already know?
3. Does the information make sense? Do you understand the information?
4. Can you verify that the information agrees with three or more other sources that are also reliable?
5. Have experts in the field been connected to it or authored the information?
6. How current is the information?
7. Does it have a copyright?
Subtle changes
Bedley also teamed up recently with Todd Flory at Wheatland Elementary School in Wichita, Kan., to do a fake news challenge via Skype. Flory's fourth-graders chose two real articles and wrote a fake article of their own. Then, they presented them to Bedley's class in California.

The fifth-graders had four minutes to do some extra research based on the presentations, and then they decided which article out of the three were fake. Most importantly, they had to explain why they thought it was fake. Otherwise, no points.

Flory says writing the fake news article was more difficult for his students than they expected because they had to make it believable.

"It really hammered home the idea to them that fake news doesn't have to be too sensational," he says. "It can be a very subtle change, but that subtle change can have big consequences."

Every Friday, Flory's class participates in what he calls Genius Hour. His students propose a question to answer through online research. But before they took to the Internet, Flory had to walk his students through the steps: What are reliable and trusted websites? How do you effectively search on the Internet and verify information?

He uses Skype to connect his students with researchers and scientists from all over the world. He calls this "authentic research."

"It's so much more powerful for them to do some of this authentic research when they're able to hear from a scientist who's seeing firsthand the effects of climate change," Flory says. This year's class got to talk to a penguin scientist.

Flory says he's not only teaching his students effective media literacy skills; he is also helping them to be better citizens through global engagement and interaction.
Let them eat fake (news)
Remember Marie Antoinette and "Let them eat cake" - her famous line about the poor that got her in all that trouble?

Thing is, it never happened. Fake news!

For Diane Morey and her ninth-graders at Danvers High School in Danvers, Mass., that's a teachable moment.

"The media of the day didn't have Facebook, Twitter or partisan websites," Morey says. "But they did have pamphlets."

She shows her class cartoons and pamphlets from the French Revolutionary period that criticized Antoinette, and then discusses the conclusions that were made from those sources. She also includes a primary source: a letter written by Antoinette.

Morey says history is rich with examples of fake news, and since source analysis is the core of her lesson plans, she doesn't need a textbook.

"We don't study [history] to memorize Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI," she explains. "We're studying this because we can see this happening in the current-day political climate."

Morey encourages students to bring in examples of articles from today's news that don't ring true.

"Once you expose it to them," she says, "it's like a game for them, seeing, 'Hey, I'm not sure I can trust this.' "
Extra layers
For 13 years, Larry Ferlazzo has been teaching kids who are learning English how to read and write. Now, he's adding another layer: helping them figure out if what they're reading is true.

Ferlazzo teaches at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. He's also a blogger and journalist.

Last month, he wrote a lesson plan on addressing fake news to English language learners (ELLs), which was published in The New York Times.

He says media literacy is especially important for ELLs for two reasons. First, they're not fluent in the language they're reading, adding an extra level of difficulty in deciding what to believe. On top of that, false or exaggerated news about immigration could have a major impact on their lives.

His lesson starts off with a few examples of reliable and fake news. Then, some basic journalism stuff: Students identify the different parts of the news, from the "lede" to quotations. They enter all that into a diagram on paper so they have a visual representation of what they're reading.

That diagram eventually becomes a guide for students to write their own fake news lede that they can share with other classmates or post on a class blog.
Media consumers and contributors
In 2015, Spencer Brayton and his colleague Natasha Casey revamped a media literacy course for students at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Ill. Brayton says the key is the critical approach.

"Students come in expecting that we're going to lecture," Brayton explains. "But we have them think about certain power structures in how information is produced and how it reaches them. If they're going to understand how they're going to take it in, then they have to know how the news is going to be produced."

To take the class, students need a Twitter account. From the very first week, they are asked to follow five to 10 accounts on Twitter that promote media and information literacy, like Media Literacy Now or Renee Hobbs.

As they follow these posts and add additional ones, the goal is that they'll start to recognize fake news and other biases or viewpoints in media.

By the end of the course, Brayton says students begin to see themselves not only as creators of information, but as credible sources of information too.

The Twitter assignments encourage his students to engage with social media - retweeting, following and commenting - which Brayton says helps his students see how they play a role in spreading information to other media consumers. That means they have to take what they share more seriously.

"In looking at this issue, people seem to want a quick solution to fake news, but I'm not sure there is a solution (at least an easy one)," Brayton writes in an email. "Students need to recognize that these skills and ideas need to stay with them through adulthood, but that's easier said than done - we all fall into this trap."

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As the national attention to fake news and the debate over what to do about it continue, one place many are looking for solutions is in the classroom. Since a recent Stanford study showed that students at practically all grade levels can't determine fake news from the real stuff, the push to teach media literacy has gained new momentum.

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Using Wikipedia to inspire good research.

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Fake news has been, well, in the news a lot lately. But for the world's largest crowdsourced encyclopedia, it's nothing new.

"Wikipedia has been dealing with fake news since it started 16 years ago," notes LiAnna Davis, deputy director of the Wiki Education Foundation.

To combat misinformation, Wikipedia has developed a robust corps of volunteer editors. Anyone can write new entries and scrutinize existing ones for adherence to Wikipedia's rules on sourcing and neutrality. While it's not free of errors or pranks, what results is a resource that 50 million people turn to daily on hundreds of thousands of topics in a few dozen languages.

Today, educators are among those more concerned than ever with standards of truth and evidence and with the lightning-fast spread of misinformation online. And the Wiki Education Foundation, a freestanding nonprofit, is sharing Wikipedia's methods with a growing number of college students, and striking a blow for digital literacy along the way.

The foundation gives professors the technical assistance they need to assign students, instead of writing a research paper, to write a brand-new Wikipedia entry, or expand an existing entry, on any topic in virtually any discipline.

This spring, 7,500 students are expected to participate. Among the many items past students written on are:

Since the program began six years ago, Davis says, students have collectively added more than 25 million words of content to Wikipedia.

Jennifer Malkowski, an assistant professor of film and media studies at Smith College, assigned her class on new media and participatory culture to write and contribute to Wikipedia entries this past fall.

"One of the things they really liked about it was the ability to share knowledge beyond the professor - that audience of one," she says. While all Smith students are expected to use good research methods in their classes, knowing that their entries might be rejected outright if they didn't conform to Wikipedia's standards "felt like a higher stake than the difference between a B and an A-minus," she says.

Malkowski will be leading a workshop to help her colleagues, some of whom are less technically minded, learn how to make Wikipedia assignments in their own classes as well.

Davis says many professors report a greater level of effort from their students on Wikipedia assignments. "If you're writing something millions of people are going to read, it's a reason to do a really good job, to go into a library and get a deep understanding of the topic."

Some professors, like Tamar Carroll, an assistant professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology, see Wikipedia as a way to make previously neglected areas of knowledge more visible. For Carroll, it's women's history. She says a former student recently emailed her to say that her Wikipedia entry on Mary Stafford Anthony, the suffragist and sister of Susan B. Anthony, was "the most meaningful assignment she had" as an undergraduate.

There's another learning opportunity too. Every Wikipedia entry has a "talk" page, where editors discuss changes, and a "view history" page that shows additions and deletions over time.

Peeking behind that curtain, says Malkowski, helps "expose how knowledge is collectively created and how different voices might come to consensus, or not, on a particular topic." Right now, she adds, "is an especially important time to be asking these epistemological questions."

According to the foundation's own survey, 87 percent of university faculty who participated in the program reported an increase in their students' media literacy. By grinding some Internet info-sausage themselves, essentially, they gained a better understanding of what goes into it.

It's an interesting turn of events for Wikipedia, which, as Davis acknowledges, has had a bad rap in academic circles as the lazy student's substitute for real research.

"When I first started going to academic conferences, people would hide and say, 'Don't let my department chair see me,' " talking to you, says Davis. She added that Wikipedia should only be a starting point for a university-level research paper, never a footnoted source.

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What Students Can Learn By Writing For Wikipedia

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Fake news has been, well, in the news a lot lately. But for the world's largest crowdsourced encyclopedia, it's nothing new. "Wikipedia has been dealing with fake news since it started 16 years ago," notes LiAnna Davis, deputy director of the Wiki Education Foundation. To combat misinformation, Wikipedia has developed a robust corps of volunteer editors.

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Students discover how to effectively navigate today's challenging information landscape

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Engaging, interactive lessons help educators equip their students with the tools to evaluate and interpret the news and to learn how to decide what news and other information to trust, share and act on.

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Engaging, interactive lessons help educators equip their students with the tools to evaluate and interpret the news and to learn how to decide what news and other information to trust, share and act on.

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Worksheet

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UNESCO's Five Laws of Media & Info Literacy Poster 

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UNESCO's Five Laws of Media & Info Literacy Poster 

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By Addie Matteson on

If you are like me, the alarm about "fake news" reached a fever pitch in your librarian circles weeks ago. The list-serves are filled with blog posts, LibGuides, and lists of resources aimed at teaching students how to determine if the news in their social media feeds is real or "fake." You are ready and eager to impart your librarian wisdom about authoritative sources and fact-based journalism on every future voter in your school. But what about the students who distrust the "mainstream media" and feel their views are more represented in sources you consider untrustworthy? How do we teach the skeptics to be critical thinkers and fact checkers, without alienating them by discounting their beliefs?

Practice, practice, practice

One way to combat stubborn skepticism is to give all students frequent opportunities to practice analyzing and discussing news stories, images, and videos. Phil Goerner, librarian at Silver Creek High School in Longmont, CO, theorizes that many students don't always recognize bias when they see it, and they aren't presented with enough opportunities to analyze sources critically. Goerner has been working with science and English teachers in his building to work source analysis into their curricula. He takes every opportunity to lure students in with a great story that motivates them to seek out the truth. Highly interesting stories like that of the mutant "Fukushima Nuclear Flowers," included on page 16 of the summary of Stanford University's recent report Evaluating Information: the Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning, keep his students engaged and curious. Goerner had adapted other class exercises from the Sanford study, including a unit on how to do a reverse image search and an exercise on native advertising, using Slate magazine as an example, drawn from page nine of the study.

Pictures are particularly difficult for students to recognize as biased, Goerner observes, noting that videos and images foster an attitude of "if I see it, it must be true" in students. Media literacy expert Frank Baker has noticed the same behavior: "Some students... lack the ability to question a photo," he says. Baker advises teachers and librarians to expose students to photos and videos that have been manipulated to present a specific perspective, and provide them frequent opportunities to analyze them.

Foster the skepticism

Tasha Bergson-Michelson, a librarian at the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, CA, has been digging into the question of how to teach young people to interrogate what they read, hear, and see. She doesn't want her students to trust a source unless they have good reason to. Her 10th graders work through a unit on source evaluation that involves them coming up with a shared rubric for the standards by which they will judge whether a source is trustworthy or not. Her students use the standards they've identified to argue the validity of the sources they choose moving forward in the project. Bergson-Michelson wants her students to understand that all news sources have a perspective, but they can look through that perspective to assess whether or not the information provided is fact-based and trustworthy.

Ask yourself the tough questions

In a recent article for the Data & Society Research Institute, danah boyd, social media scholar and Microsoft Research principal researcher, warns educators to be careful about seeking quick fixes for the current media crisis. Her article "Did Media Literacy Backfire?" describes the troubling fact that the Internet is so vast that empowered users can always find information to back their own ideas, no matter how wild or fraudulent they may be. Students, left to their own devices, can easily find sources that "prove" even the most dangerously incorrect "facts."

"No curricular intervention is received by everyone universally, no intervention is ever 'enough,'" boyd told SLJ. "Thus, the big question that I would throw back to educators is: what are the unintended consequences of your well-intended interventions?"

It's not enough to provide students with a list of sources that are "real" and "fake," boyd emphasizes. She writes, "It's going to require a cultural change about how we make sense of information, whom we trust, and how we understand our own role in grappling with information." That means deep dives, like the work Bergson-Michelson's 10th graders are doing, scouring the internet for journalists' backgrounds, and digging up the parent companies for news magazines.

Start with the [librarian] in the mirror

The best way to begin that cultural change is to face our own biases. Last spring, while Bergson-Michelson set out to teach her students about evaluating the news, she realized that she relied on the same handful of news sources, all of which leaned in one political direction. She sought credible sources from the other side of the aisle. Her search became an odyssey, described in detail in a blog post for the Association of Independent School Librarians.

Her advice for reaching students who think differently than you: practice what you preach. Read the work of writers who disagree with you, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Apply the same standards to all news sources, liberal, conservative, and everything in between. Don't simply tell your students the sources that are valid, but teach them how you came to that decision, and give them opportunities to create their own group of credible sources.
Addie Matteson is a middle school librarian at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, GA.

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Teaching News Literacy? Check Your Own Bias, Says Librarian

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By Addie Matteson on If you are like me, the alarm about "fake news" reached a fever pitch in your librarian circles weeks ago. The list-serves are filled with blog posts, LibGuides, and lists of resources aimed at teaching students how to determine if the news in their social media feeds is real or "fake."

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Fact or Fiction? A List of TED videos to start the discussion with your students - YouTube

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We recently posted, " 10 Ways to Spot a Fake News Article," which highlighted key items to look for on a website when determining its credibility. The infographic found here summarizes the content from the blog post and students can use it as a guide when using news sources in research. Post, print, or share it with your students or others!

Looking for other resources related to website credibility? We've listed some of our favorites below the infographic!

This lesson plan, by Channel One News (a Houghton Mifflin Harcourt company), includes discussion questions, a writing activity, and a video that can be shown to students to help them understand that they shouldn't believe everything that they read or hear. It highlights fake information posted on social media sites and also discusses how "official" looking news sites could actually be fake.

This checklist can be distributed to students to help them determine if a news article is fake or not. We love how they included red flags throughout the checklist. Too many red flags circled? This means that the website the student is rating most likely contains false information!

Have you seen our blog post, "How Savvy Are Your Students?: 7 Fake Websites to Really Test Their Evaluation Skills." ?

The websites listed on this blog post all contain incorrect information. See if your students are able to put the pointers from the infographic to the test and catch on that these sites are not credible.

This page includes the TED-Ed videos, How to Choose Your News , and How False News Can Spread . It also features discussion questions for students to answer, as well as an activity where students are asked to impose a 48-hour news blackout.
Related blog posts:

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Identifying Fake News: An Infographic and Educator Resources - EasyBib Blog

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We recently posted, " 10 Ways to Spot a Fake News Article," which highlighted key items to look for on a website when determining its credibility. The infographic found here summarizes the content from the blog post and students can use it as a guide when using news sources in research.

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7 Fake Websites to Really Test Their Evaluation Skills

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7 Fake Websites to Really Test Their Evaluation Skills

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Looking to test your students' capabilities at figuring out if a website is real or not? Use these fake websites to help, but be careful! Looks may deceive you! Some of these sites are tougher to catch than others.

GenoChoice gives parents the opportunity to genetically modify their future child's DNA to prevent diseases and health issues. It's essentially a service that allows parents to create the "perfect child." While there aren't many links on the site, GenoChoice states that it is affiliated with "RYT Hospital". Upon clicking on the RYT Hospital link, viewers are directed to a hospital website that is quite official looking at first glance.

The giveaway? Many of the links do not work, both on GenoChoice and RYT Hospital's site. In addition, RYT Hospital cannot be found on a map or a simple Google search. There is also a feature on the site where readers can place their thumb on the screen for a DNA scan. This is not possible!

Ever wish you were related to a famous person? Have you ever tried to produce your family tree, but came up empty handed? Buy an Ancestor Online provides you with the ability to purchase an ancestor, "complete with authenticating documents." With daily hot deals and monthly specials, this site can provide you with the missing link in your family tree that you've always dreamed of.

The giveaway? The site not only looks outdated, but it was last updated in 2012. There is also very little information on the founder, Bob Fulkerson, and the site is maintained by the "Losing Proposition Company." The real giveaway? Reviews placed on the site by so-called "expert genealogists," state that it's all a scam and it will bring in some "REAL suckers."

A beautiful sanctuary for our four-legged friends, Dog Island is home to 2,500 dogs. All are able to roam free and enjoy a peaceful life among their furry friends. With man-made caves as shelters, plenty of rabbits and other wildlife to feed on, and separate islands for dogs of similar sizes, families can send their dogs to Dog Island to live happily in this oasis, for free.

The giveaway? While a Google search shows that Dog Island is the name of a real island off the coast of Florida, numerous grammatical errors throughout the Frequently Asked Questions page raises red flags about the validity of the website. Want to visit their main office? Due to protesters who oppose Dog Island, "we've had to make our land office a maze to get to." The directions to the office involve solving a cryptic puzzle.

Nestled in the heart of the midwest, Mankato Minnesota boasts itself as a "hidden vacation Mecca." It sits on the "Sclare/Far Fissure," which is a phenomenon that turns the air temperature to a 70 degree paradise...all year long. With tons of pages and links to back up their claim and five-star reviews from newspapers, this site could easily convince someone about this magical paradise in Minnesota.

The giveaway? The site looks outdated, with colorful, flashy images and banners. A Google search of Mankato, Minnesota pulls up the city's official homepage, which shows that it is currently 32 degrees, a far cry from the 70 degrees that the hoax site claims.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The Ova Prima Foundation is on a mission to find out. This non-profit agency's site is quite convincing. All links work and the site includes information regarding the mission, history, and abstracts and citations of research papers associated with the foundation. There are even lesson plans for educators who are looking to teach chicken or the egg theories.

The giveaway? Doing a quick search on the author and the company pulls up a ton of results showcasing that website as a hoax. In addition, the term, "ovaprimatological," is used throughout, which is not a real word. While it's convincing to see the research abstracts and citations, all are missing dates.

This beautifully designed website seems like the perfect place for elementary and middle school students to find information about famous explorers. With many of the world's most famous explorers featured, this site is easy for students to navigate, includes lesson plans for teachers, and information about the authors.

The giveaway? All About Explorers' mission is to teach students to check their facts with a second source, so the site is riddled with tons of incorrect information. It states that, "Christopher Columbus was born in 1951 in Sydney, Australia." and that Juan Ponce de Leon, "was hired by Revlon, a cosmetic company, to search for the Fountain of Youth (a body of water that would enable you to look young forever)."

In addition to incorrect information about the explorers, the biographies about the authors contain numerous inaccuracies. Their chief researcher worked at the University of Demiglace-on-Seine, which isn't a real school and it states that the webmaster has, "visited six of the seven major continents and a few minor ones as well."

Probably the toughest website to catch as a fake, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus site is beautifully designed, all links work, and the author's information is available with a link to his regularly updated blog. There is even an online store where readers can purchase mugs, shirts, and stickers, all displaying images of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!

The giveaway? A quick search of the affiliated school, "Kelvnic University," and the "Wild Haggis Conservation Society," brings up quite a few websites that state them as fake. In addition, the author states that sasquatch is a natural predator to the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.
Related blog posts:

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How Savvy are Your Students?: 7 Fake Websites to Really Test Their Evaluation Skills - EasyBib Blog

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Looking to test your students' capabilities at figuring out if a website is real or not? Use these fake websites to help, but be careful! Looks may deceive you! Some of these sites are tougher to catch than others. GenoChoice gives parents the opportunity to genetically modify their future child's DNA to prevent diseases and health issues.

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Algorithms filter news for us online, narrow our perspective

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Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

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As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.

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What can we ask students? Links to lesson plans.

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By Emily Bush on

Over the course of the fall semester, I had the opportunity to visit a handful of classes to speak on news literacy. I began by posing the question, "Does the news media take sides?" Though a small sample, nearly 100 percent of students I polled distrusted the media. I found this wariness of the mainstream media echoed throughout classes I visited-on campuses ranging from rural Humphreys County, TN, to just a few miles outside downtown Nashville-as I quizzed students on their news habits. This shouldn't have surprised me given recent polls showing the country's distrust for the mass media at historical highs. But these were millennials I was polling, not old white men tuned into Fox News 24/7. I'd expected less cynicism.

News must come to them

Most commonly, I posed the question, "Where do you get your news?" My favorite reply-"If it's important, I'll find out"-was frighteningly honest. Many students seconded this response, explaining that they get most of their news by word of mouth-a dangerous game of telephone in an election year rife with misconstructions. Despite their reputation for being tech savvy, supposed digital natives appear to have some troubling news consumption habits, at least according to these impromptu polls. Along with word of mouth, social media was the preferred way to stay in the know. An occasional student mentioned the local news or CNN. Newspapers (digital and print) were considered passé or not to be trusted.

I watched one student's eyes bug out, his mouth agape, as I told his classmates that their Facebook feeds mirrored their beliefs, and that Facebook is not a news organization. It wants you to feel the warm, fuzzy feelings of confirmation bias as you scroll through your news feed, enticing you to stay a spell. I followed up with a tour through the Wall Street Journal's "Blue Feed, Red Feed" -a project designed to illustrate the echo chambers our social media accounts generate. Our students aren't so much living in echo chambers as post-news isolation chambers where the news must find them organically, virally-whether through friends, a headline on Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat, or (better yet!) a meme. Their news is something to be caught, not sought.

News nuance

When I ask students, "When referring to the media, what are sources?", students were rarely able to answer. As librarians, we discuss how to evaluate sources for research. We arrive at our one-shot instructional sessions armed with an arsenal of hoax sites (I'm starting to think the Tree Octopus hoax was created by librarians, for librarians). We do the CRAAP test. We emphasize that databases have reliable sources: "Just use the databases and you'll be OK!" we cheer. We create checklists and fun new acronyms, all in an attempt to paint a black-and-white picture of the grayest of concepts: trustworthiness. Since many of us graduated from library school, evaluation of sources has evolved into a more nuanced topic, more relevant now than ever. You can no longer judge a website by its cover-fake news sites are just as slick as legit news sites. Sites like Buzzfeed mix hard news with fluff, opinion, and kitty cat pics.

Learning news literacy

But it's not just about avoiding getting hoodwinked. It's about news literacy-understanding balance, fairness, and bias. News literacy extends beyond political spin and talking heads. And resources for incorporating news literacy into your one-shots abound. What about bad sourcing? The New York Times created a checklist for source verification-and (bonus!) it's acronym-based! The News Literacy Project and the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University provide detailed lesson plans. There's even room to incorporate news literacy into subject-specific instruction. In May 2016, for instance, John Oliver gave "bad science" journalism the smackdown. Science Librarians: Quartz has lesson plans for you here.

News and media literacy are critically underrepresented at the secondary and post-secondary levels. As librarians, we should be at the forefront of advocating for curriculum designed to make students critical thinkers and savvy consumers of information. While most of our students will abandon academic research the day they turn in their last college research paper, they will continue to be bombarded by miracle cures, truthiness, hoaxes, conspiracy theorists, bad sourcing, and unverified lies. And that's just on Facebook.
Emily Bush is Coordinator of Library Instruction at Tennessee's Nashville State Community College

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By Emily Bush on Over the course of the fall semester, I had the opportunity to visit a handful of classes to speak on news literacy. I began by posing the question, "Does the news media take sides?" Though a small sample, nearly 100 percent of students I polled distrusted the media.

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Padlet Links to Media Literacy resources

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Media Literacy Laws

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This week UNESCO launched a framework illustrating its Five Laws of Media and Information Literacy (MIL).

This global strategy marries the large, but often separated, disciplines of information literacy and media literacy and creates a common vocabulary for folks in multiple areas of knowledge to engage in conversation. It also positions these critical literacies as a combined set of competencies-knowledge, skills and attitudes-central for living and working in our world today.

The UNESCO announcement explains the rationale behind the new framework:

Empowerment of people through Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is an important prerequisite for fostering equitable access to information and knowledge and promoting free, independent and pluralistic media and information systems.

Media and Information Literacy recognizes the primary role of information and media in our everyday lives. It lies at the core of freedom of expression and information - since it empowers citizens to understand the functions of media and other information providers, to critically evaluate their content, and to make informed decisions as users and producer of information and media content.

In essence of course, the 5 Laws focus on competencies that address knowledge in all formats and resonate with our own professional values and standards. In summary they assert: (1) information/media are critical to civic engagement and sustainable development and equally relevant in all forms; (2) every citizen is a creator of information/knowledge; (3) information/media messages are not always value neutral and truth should be made understandable; (4) every citizen has a right to access and understand new information/knowledge/messages; (5) media/information literacy is acquired as a process.

UNESCO plans to focus on preparing teachers to better understand and integrate MIL into teaching and learning by providing appropriate pedagogical methods, curricula and resources.

The graphic is available at the UNESCO site in English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Portuguese.

(Librarians may hear some echoes of another set of Five Laws.)

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UNESCO Launches Five Laws of Media and Information Literacy (MIL)

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This week UNESCO launched a framework illustrating its Five Laws of Media and Information Literacy (MIL). This global strategy marries the large, but often separated, disciplines of information literacy and media literacy and creates a common vocabulary for folks in multiple areas of knowledge to engage in conversation.

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9 Lessons to Boost Media Literacy