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Check resources and base your decision making on the truth,

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Look up their information to see if they have a background in the topic they are discussing.

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We have talked to students about website endings (.com, .org., .edu) which is helpful. The missing piece though is talking to them about the information they see through various social media outlets. I think it may also take some explicit teaching about the importance of fact checking, and knowing where your information comes from.

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The growing stream of reporting on and data about fake news, misinformation, partisan content, and news literacy is hard to keep up with. This weekly roundup offers the highlights of what you might have missed.

This week, a story popped to the top of my Facebook feed: "Women absorb and retain DNA from every man they have sex with." It was probably the first time a Snopes-debunked story has been so high in my feed, and that was because it was shared in a Facebook local moms' group in which I'm an active member, with a whole bunch of ensuing discussion before two women pointed out that it was junk. It was a jarring example of how fake/misleading/hoax-y science news can spread easily in places where you might not see other types of viral fake news.

"My sense is that of all the categories of fake news, health news is the worst. There's more bad health news out there than there is in any other category," Kelly McBride, VP of the Poynter Institute, told The Atlantic's Julie Beck. "Reliable sources on other topics are [sometimes] really bad on health care news." And depending on what you like to do on Facebook, you might be a lot more likely to see fake news about health than fake news on other topics.

Low-quality information is just about as likely to go viral as high-quality information, researchers found in a paper published in Nature Human Behavior (paywall) this week. They created a simplified social feed and analyzed real data from Tumblr and Twitter. Rachel Becker writes in The Verge:

By tracking 100,000 different posts across 20 different simulations, the researchers learned that generally, higher-quality ideas - more beautiful photos, or truer statements - are better at spreading through the network. But if the social network is constantly deluged by new posts and the users don't have infinite attention spans (which, we don't), the group loses its ability to discriminate between good and bad ideas. Basically, for high-quality posts to win the sharing war on social media, the volume of new information flowing into that network has to be pretty low, and the users' attention spans have to be pretty high.

Of course, the volume of new information flowing into social networks is extremely high, and people's attention spans waver quickly.

"Fake news is a problem, but the bigger problem is the overabundance of information in people's lives," Filippo Menczer, one of the study's authors and a professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University, told BuzzFeed News's Tom Chivers. As for all of the talk about teaching people to spot fake news with various apps and Facebook initiatives: "People are human. You can't expect them to treat information as a scholarly thing," Menczer said. "It's not supposed to be homework. It's supposed to be part of their daily lives."

The paper's authors also think Twitter needs to find a way of dealing with bots. "We're finding very strong quantitative evidence that social bots are very effective at getting fake news to go viral," Menczer told NOVA Next.

Vox editor-in-chief Ezra Klein interviewed researcher danah boyd this week about a variety of fake news-adjacent issues. The full episode is here; the media/news conversation starts at around 50 minutes in. One bit from boyd:

The public is very confused about how they're consuming and making sense of information. They don't trust many players. They've been socialized into an idea that they should go and research it themselves, in ways that actually can be deeply costly. We see the rise of conspiracy theories when we see a moment of feeling like you can connect different pieces and tell a story, and that same practice that allows us to be researchers or investigative journalists is also the manufacturing of conspiracy. In order to actually go back and challenge this, it's not just going out and saying "Don't propagate this conspiracy or think about it this way." It's, whoa, how did we get here?

Speaking of Vox, last week two Twitter users masqueraded as Vox staffers and tweeted a very Vox-looking infographic, "entitled 'AHCA Quick Facts,' [that] came to a rather un-Vox-y conclusion: 'Killing 3 GOP senators prevents ten 9/11s.'" Ian Prasad Philbrick writes at Slate:

Harris and Cohen's behavior chimed with another faux-news tradition, one that doesn't just aim to churn out bogus information but, in adopting reputable-looking URLs like BostonTribune.com and ABCNews.com.co or impersonating journalists employed by otherwise-credible outlets, seeks to sow doubt and confusion among readers toward news organizations dedicated to disseminating accurate information as well. Harris and Cohen's fake credentials undermine journalistic credibility, junk Vox's reputation, and embolden broad-brush cries of "fake news" aimed at the mainstream media.

" Twitter is looking for ways to let users flag fake news, offensive content " (The Washington Post)

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If you think nobody's shared any fake news with you recently, maybe you should think harder

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The growing stream of reporting on and data about fake news, misinformation, partisan content, and news literacy is hard to keep up with. This weekly roundup offers the highlights of what you might have missed. This week, a story popped to the top of my Facebook feed: "Women absorb and retain DNA from every man they have sex with."

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Distinguishing between what is real and what is fake?

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Distinguishing between what is real and what is fake?

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I would like to do "scroll through's" of Twitter, FB, etc. feeds and discern what appears to be legitimate vs. not. At the same time, we've entered a unique period where truth has become somewhat subjective. This has less to do with media literacy than it does with peoples' own echo chambers and worldviews. 

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I would like to do "scroll through's" of Twitter, FB, etc. feeds and discern what appears to be legitimate vs. not. At the same time, we've entered a unique period where truth has become somewhat subjective. This has less to do with media literacy than it does with peoples' own echo chambers and worldviews. 

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I wonder if we have to start with a conversation about bias, and how certain websites make money by being controversial or by running stories that may not have a factual basis. Then, try to have kids take the role of investigators who care about the information they consume.

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In teaching USII (7th grade) students this past spring about Trump's Muslim ban, we examined the actual factual details of the ban rather than the editorial news content about it in order to analyze it and discuss as a class without the media sound byte factor

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In teaching USII (7th grade) students this past spring about Trump's Muslim ban, we examined the actual factual details of the ban rather than the editorial news content about it in order to analyze it and discuss as a class without the media sound byte factor

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I wrongfully assume that my students know the difference between an Op-Ed and an expository piece. 

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I wrongfully assume that my students know the difference between an Op-Ed and an expository piece. 

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The term itself of Fake News has itself a different meaning depending on our perceptions.  

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The term itself of Fake News has itself a different meaning depending on our perceptions.  

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The term seemed to once be referencing intentionally false information spread online by people paid to spread false information. Now it seems to just be a term people shout out when they disagree with what a source says. Due to this, it seems like the term itself has been watered-down and people don't really care about actual false information.

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Do English language learners experience fake news differently than native speakers? When we talk about information literacy, what we do we need to think about to make sure diverse learners understand the key concepts?

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I could use Unsplash and Factitious as an opener to class discussion.

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I could use Unsplash and Factitious as an opener to class discussion.

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I have found socratic seminar to be an engaging way for students to think critically in a peer group.  In history, I have used this tool following some sort of reading and with guided questions and after some table conferencing in small groups so that students have some ideas to contribute to the larger group. Inevitably, the discussion connects with and weaves into current events and personal experiences.  

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I have found socratic seminar to be an engaging way for students to think critically in a peer group.  In history, I have used this tool following some sort of reading and with guided questions and after some table conferencing in small groups so that students have some ideas to contribute to the larger group. Inevitably, the discussion connects with and weaves into current events and personal experiences.  

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Lots of quotes around the building. Does that say anything about the culture and climate of the school?

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Lots of quotes around the building. Does that say anything about the culture and climate of the school?

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For primary grade levels, starting with teaching the difference between fake and real. Role playing experiences and discussing what makes that experience real or fake. (This was such an eye opener! Something we had not thought about until this class. Thank you!) 

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For primary grade levels, starting with teaching the difference between fake and real. Role playing experiences and discussing what makes that experience real or fake. (This was such an eye opener! Something we had not thought about until this class. Thank you!) 

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I wish people would always check resources and if the resource is rei