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Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers and Fake News, OH MY! 

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Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers and Fake News, OH MY! 

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These are important concepts to teach to your students, given how much students are online and how most say they rely on social media for their news.  It is important (for you AND for them) to understand how filter bubbles lead to echo chambers and why we want to help avoid this.  We also want to understand how filter bubbles can lead to fake news and how ALL of this can create confirmation bias.

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Watch to find out exactly what a filter bubble is and why it is important to understand them.

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How do Filter Bubbles Influence Students?

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How do Filter Bubbles Influence Students?

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When students get information from their social media feeds, it often only tells them part of the story. Their friends, and the website's algorithms, tend to feed them perspectives they already agree with.  It doesn't give them contradicting views to their opinions.  This create limitations for them and the information they are able to find.

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Watch to find out what an Echo Chamber is and why we need to be aware of them.

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A large majority of students rely on Twitter and Facebook for their news.  Which would prove a problem because students might have tendency to seek out and read news sources which confirm the beliefs they already have, and steer clear of ones that don't. "Once your narrative is confirmed (and repeatedly re-confirmed) the likelihood of your studying other sources which express an opposing view is nearly zero" (Dixon).

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Research led by Stanford History Education Group found that in a diverse sample of 3,446 high school students from 14 states, most students struggled to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy information online. Only about 3% could identify fake news, and they used ineffective ways to determine is the sites credible.  They relied heavily on the fact that they were using .org websites, and put a lot of trust in "about us" parts of websites.  (Educational Researcher, Vol. 50, No. 8, 2021).

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Watch the video to understand how fake news, filter bubbles and social media's algorithms play into our confirmation biases.

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Fake News: Confirmation Bias, Filter Bubbles, and Algorithms

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Confirmation bias is the tendency to only interpret and internalize information that supports or aligns with your preconceived beliefs.  Confirmation bias can limit a student’s ability to learn new information, especially when it challenges their existing beliefs. Confirmation bias can exist not only with the beliefs and ideas that students hold, but also with the beliefs and ideas that teachers themselves have. This can severely impact the information that is being learned and shared.

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All Sides is a website that exposes people to information and ideas from all sides of the political spectrum so they can better understand the world and each other.

Duck Duck Go is a site that allows you to conduct online searches without being tracked.

Other ways to help pop the bubble are:
-Clear personal search history.
-Turn off targeted advertising.
-Delete browser cookies.
-Keep social media data private.
-Seek news from a variety of sources.
-Don't unfriend people with different views.
-Listen with intent to learn.

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A Lesson to Help with Echo Chambers and Fake News.

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A Lesson to Help with Echo Chambers and Fake News.

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Combating the echo chamber and fake news means getting students to become critical thinkers and reflectors. A lesson that promotes critical thinking and reflection is analyzing a hoax website. Students learn that everything they find online, including social information, should be questioned.

A great site to use is The Northwest Tree Octopus.

Students can research the site and then share things they notice about its validity with each other.

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A great way to help students combat fake news is to teach them how to conduct "lateral reading." This is where you teach the students to leave their original source and check other sites for background information of the source.  Checking what other websites say about a source is a better evaluation strategy than trusting what the source says about itself.

Teach your students to:

Open many browser tabs.

Leave the site you are on.

Do a Google search for the source or information you are evaluating.

Read what trusted and reliable sources are saying about the site or claim. Try finding four to five seperate sources that back up your site or claim.

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Bad News is a fun way for students to learn all about becoming “fake news tycoons” by using outrageous social media posts and emotionally driven headlines to gain followers. Players can earn badges as they build a fake news empire, including awards for impersonation, emotion, polarization, conspiracy, trolling, and discrediting opponents.  The aim of the game is to help students get better at spotting fake news.

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Another fun game aimed at helping students recognize fake news is factitious.  The game has three levels and tests the users ability to distinguish between real news stories and fake news stories.

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"There’s no perfect way to avoid echo chambers, but here are a few tips that can help you stay on the right track.

Make a habit of checking multiple news sources to ensure you’re getting complete, objective info.

Interact with people of different perspectives, and take care to discuss new ideas with facts, patience, and respect.

Remember that just because you want something to be true, doesn’t make it fact." (GCF Global)

Teachers mixing groups up and increasing the opportunities for students to partner up with different partners on projects can help student's get multiple and different perspectives.

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A great video for teachers AND students! These are five things we can all do to help open our minds and combat those biases.

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https://coda.io/@susanna-olson/digital-literacy-resources/hate-speech-bias-and-echo-chambers-14

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/01/career-fake-news

https://busyteacher.org/24585-news-media-esl-lesson.html

https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/digital-media-literacy/what-is-an-echo-chamber/1/

https://avidopenaccess.org/resource/pop-the-filter-bubble/