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Media literacy is suddenly a front-burner issue for schools, thanks to the recent presidential election, a spate of reports on "fake news" and new research demonstrating just how ill-equipped young people are to critically evaluate information they encounter online and via social media.

"We worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish." - Stanford University researchers

As a result, educators find themselves behind the eight ball, expected to help students negotiate everything from internet hoaxes, to partisan policy advocacy disguised as unbiased news, to a President-elect who has used Twitter to spread baseless claims originating in unfounded conspiracy theories. The stakes are high, contend the Stanford University researchers behind a widely cited recent study, " Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning. "

"We worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish," the group wrote.

Such concerns aren't entirely new. For years, researchers have documented students' widespread inability to gauge the reliability and trustworthiness of online information. In 2006, for example, University of Connecticut researcher Donald Leu conducted a study in which middle schoolers unanimously fell for an internet hoax about a made-up endangered species - an octopus that lives in trees.

Last year, Leu's New Literacies Research Lab found that fewer than 4 percent of 7th graders could correctly identify the author of online science information, evaluate that author's expertise and point of view, and make informed judgments about the overall reliability of the site they were reading.

Educators and advocacy groups have responded by promoting the notion of " media literacy." The term generally refers to the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create information using multiple forms of communication, with the larger goal of creating informed and responsible citizens. A coalition of nonprofit organizations announced last month a campaign to lobby states to pass new legislation that would promote such instruction in schools.

Ultimately, experts say, the best antidote to the free-for-all of online information is a culture of critical thinking. They also want to spread specific strategies for helping students spot fake news, consider the sources of online content, weigh the evidence behind claims and compare competing points of view.

But the "decimation" of school libraries, an over-emphasis on standardized test preparation, and slow-to-evolve teacher-preparation efforts have left the K-12 sector struggling to keep pace with the communications technologies that dominate their students' lives, said Leu.

"We're not even close to preparing citizens who can continually evaluate online information to make informed decisions about their lives," he said.
'Misleads and Blinds Us'
In recent weeks, stories about "fake news" have garnered considerable national attention.

Prior to the presidential election, for example, BuzzFeed News identified more than 100 such sites (all supporting then-candidate Donald J. Trump) being run from a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

"On every policy issue that has an impact on the daily life of ordinary citizens, there are private interests working to sway public opinion by pretending to be something they're not." - Sam Wineburg, Stanford professor

Two weeks later, BuzzFeed reported that 20 top-performing election-related stories from "hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs" generated more engagement on Facebook during the critical months of the presidential campaign than the 20 best-performing election stories from such major news outlets such as the New York Times and NBC News.

And last week, a gunman entered a Washington pizza shop aiming to "self-investigate" an unfounded internet conspiracy theory that had been shared on Twitter by the son and chief of staff of Gen. Michael Flynn, nominated by President-elect Trump to be the country's National Security Advisor. (Trump later dropped the younger Flynn from his transition team, and Gen. Flynn has drawn fresh criticism for sharing other false information via social media.)

Still, fake news isn't the most pressing challenge confronting schools, said Sam Wineburg, a Stanford education professor who helped lead the university's recent study.
Far more worrisome, Wineburg said, is the prevalence of private groups pushing their own agendas under the guise of unbiased news.

As part of the Stanford study, for example, the researchers presented middle schoolers with a screenshot of the homepage for the website Slate.com. Included on the page was a "native advertisement"-an ad designed to look like a news story, but labeled with the words "sponsored content." More than 80 percent of the students in the study believed the ad was a real news story.

High schoolers, meanwhile, were asked to compare the headlines and graphics associated with two pieces of science-related content on the website of news outlet The Atlantic. Both dealt with climate change. The first was a traditional news story, and the second was sponsored by Shell Oil Company. Nearly 70 percent of the students in the study argued that the Shell advertisement was the more reliable source of information.
"On every policy issue that has an impact on the daily life of ordinary citizens, there are private interests working to sway public opinion by pretending to be something they're not," Wineburg said. "It misleads and blinds us."
Asking Key Questions
For schools, media literacy is an "enduring issue" that predates social media and the internet, said Lawrence Paska, the executive director for the National Council for the Social Studies, a membership association that supports social studies education in K-12 and higher education.

Whether reading a printed book, a newspaper article or a Facebook post, it's important that students be able to "ask key questions, compare competing claims, assess credibility, and reflect on one's own process of reasoning," according to the group's position statement.

A first step, Paska said, is making sure that both students and teachers have an effective framework for evaluating the credibility of information they encounter. He pointed to a set of questions developed by the National Center for Media Literacy Education: Who paid for this? When was this made? Who might benefit? What is left out of this message that might be important to know? How was this shared with the public?
NCSS also believes that students learn to become critical consumers of information by researching, planning, and making their own media messages.

That kind of "constructivist" approach is also embraced by Claire Beach, a veteran teacher, filmmaker and media-literacy advocate who was a driving force behind a recently enacted law in Washington state requiring the office of the state superintendent of public instruction to lead an effort to devise and share with schools best practices around media literacy and digital citizenship.

"Once you start giving students the tools to understand when they're being manipulated, you're blown away with the changes you see," Beach said.

The same principles can be applied to magazine ads, reality television shows and viral social media posts. But trying to keep up with the sheer volume of media, information, technology and platforms now available can leave even the most committed teachers exhausted, she said.

"It's like going from sitting down to running marathons," Beach said.

To help keep up, Stanford's Wineburg and the University of Connecticut's Leu advised that students need to learn and practice new skills that are specific to reading new digital media.

One example: Leu suggested that when preparing reference lists that include online information, students should be expected to include a short written description of why a source was selected and how they determined it to be credible.

Students should be taught to distinguish between "verified" and "unverified" accounts on social media, a technique that can be used to help identify legitimate sources of information. (The Stanford study found that high school students appeared to be largely unaware of such conventions.)
The Bigger Challenge
But the bigger challenge for schools, the researchers agreed, is keeping pace with the rapid- and often troubling -shifts in the broader news and media landscape.

Two weeks after winning the presidential election, for example, President-elect Trump sent a message to his 16 million-plus Twitter followers. It said that he had "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally"- a baseless claim, originally made on websites that promote unfounded conspiracy theories, that was quickly debunked by numerous news organizations.

Of course, politicians and celebrities from across the political spectrum have long been guilty of spin, misinformation and outright lying.

But the example of Trump's tweet (and others like it) helps show how the current landscape is different, Leu and Wineburg pointed out. The internet and social media have made it far easier for powerful entities to directly and quickly spread false or misleading information far and wide. When such entities also suggest that factual accuracy of public information and statements matters less than the emotions they inspire, democracy itself can be threatened, the two researchers contend.

The good news, the researchers said, is that the internet is also the best fact-checking tool ever invented.

"We have a bounty of information before us," Wineburg said. "Whether it makes us more thoughtful or more stupid is a matter of our educational response to this challenge."
This story was produced by Education Week, a nonprofit, independent news organization with comprehensive pre-K-12 news and analysis. Read the original post here.

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Students have struggled with fake news for longer than you think

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Media literacy is suddenly a front-burner issue for schools, thanks to the recent presidential election, a spate of reports on "fake news" and new research demonstrating just how ill-equipped young people are to critically evaluate information they encounter online and via social media.

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As an elementary educator, it is important to me to teach my young students how to safely navigate the internet and discern whether the information they find is credible or not.  One of my PGP (Professional Growth Plans) each year is to provide my students with the instruction necessary to ensure that they understand how to search for credible sources on the internet; however, “fake news”, or made up stories and internet hoaxes, is extremely prevalent and can be difficult to detect.  The links I have posted on this Padlet explain the fake news phenomenon and how it affects children and promote efforts that occur in the classroom to help students become discerning digital citizens, and provide resources for parents to promote positive digital citizenship at home and in the classroom.

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The degree to which fake news stories are influential is proliferating headlines as of late.

Appearing in social media feeds and magnified through sharing by users, the potential impact of false news was graphically illustrated by a Dec. 4 incident at a Washington, D.C. restaurant.

In the incident, a North Carolina man entered the restaurant and pointed a gun at an employee, claiming he was there to "self-investigate" an online conspiracy theory involving a child abuse ring and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Police have since confirmed there were no active investigations concerning child abuse at the restaurant.

Strictly false news and internet hoaxes are not the only landmines in the field digital media consumers must traverse. News from a particular political perspective, from both the left and the right, comingles with news from more traditional sources and sponsored posts from advertisers in the stream of social media feeds from which many Americans get their news. Perhaps you even clicked on this column through a social media website yourself.

All this amidst an overtly negative view of journalists from President-elect Donald Trump, a sentiment shared by many Americans. In a recent interview with National Public Radio, Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly expressed concern over the trend.

"I think it's dangerous," Kelly said. "People ... need good, strong, skeptical journalists to be covering whoever it is-whether it's Barack Obama or President Donald Trump-and we're in a dangerous phase right now, where too many millions of Americans aren't listening at all to what the press tells them."

In an age when discerning truth from fiction is a full-time job, most would likely agree it is an important skill-both on an individual level and for the democracy as a whole. It appears that even young people, oft thought to be the tech savviest among us, are just as susceptible to believing falsehoods and information from questionable sources. A recent study from Stanford University evaluated thousands of students and their ability to judge credibility of online information.

"Overall, young people's ability to reason about the information on the internet can be summed up in one word: bleak," the study stated. "Never had we had so much information at our fingertips. Whether this bounty will make us smarter and better informed or more ignorant and narrow-minded will depend on our awareness of this problem and our educational response to it. At present we worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish."

The research began in January 2015, before the more recent controversies over fake news. Several exercises demonstrated a severe failure in distinguishing between sponsored content and news content, for example-in one test, 80 percent of students believed a native ad marked as "sponsored content" was a real news story. A native ad is specifically designed to match the content it appears next to, making it more difficult to identify. Native ad videos may be placed directly next to videos produced by journalists, for instance.

Audra Lind, English teacher at Brainerd High School, teaches a digital and media literacy course to high school students. Lind said although specific skills as they relate to online media are necessary as part of a 21st-century curriculum, at the issue's core is the development of critical thinking skills-an ever-present concept in the classroom.

"Teachers in general, we teach critical thinking," Lind said. "The whole idea that this whole fake news thing is catching us off guard is kind of silly. ... I think it's more the push for social media, social media's grab on things than it is our ability to critically think through that."

Lind said simply integrating technology into the learning experience is the first step toward good digital citizenship among learners. Beyond that, the curriculum in her media literacy classes focused on several key concepts of evaluating the credibility of content, as well as a study on internet hoaxes, news bias, fact-checking websites and the use of social media in political campaigns.

In one case study, Lind's students were asked to read a portion of the Supreme Court's opinion on burning the American flag alongside an editorial on the issue. Students were asked to identify the opinion statements within the editorial and use that exercise to self-reflect on their own potential biases.

"We discussed it where our bias might be as we approached it and then took a look at it through the eyes of the Supreme Court," Lind said. "Yeah, we might all have bias, but this is how we can look at this in a dispassionate sort of way, a logical and analytical sort of way."

Lind said it was tough to make a judgment on her students' abilities to identify the bias effectively.

"Like just about every other topic in high school, they were all over the map," Lind said.

She said some students were wide-eyed at the concept, while others had a more cynical approach.

"Sometimes, even though they're jaded and cynical, they haven't really explored something academically or in an intentional sort of way," Lind said.

Lind incorporates ISTE standards into her teaching, created by an organization focused on integrating educational technology into the classroom. The standards are intended to emphasize skills for students to "engage and thrive in a connected, digital world," ISTE states on its website. One standard focuses on good digital citizenship-promoting the recognition of rights and responsibilities. Another considers the curation of resources to construct knowledge-ensuring "students evaluate the accuracy, perspective, credibility and relevance of information, media, data or other resources."

In conjunction with the Brainerd Dispatch, Lind asked students to voluntarily answer a survey question identifying the steps they take to evaluate posts on social media, selecting however many apply. The survey also asked students their feelings concerning fake news.

A total of 71 10th-12th graders participated. Of those, the highest number-28-reporting using a search engine to check for multiple sources to corroborate the story. Twenty-one students said they check the URL of the website to help determine the validity of the information, and 14 said they seek out different perspective than their own on the topic. Nearly 35 percent of students responding said if the information "sounds true," they don't worry about it, while 25 percent said they believe the information based on who posted it.

When asked their view of fake news, 55 percent of students responding indicated they did not care about it. Of those, 35 percent said it was because they felt it did not impact them one way or another, while 20 percent said they did not pay attention to the news. Of the students who said they care about fake news, 25 percent said source that "manipulate" should be identified, while 19 percent identified with the concern readers should be able to figure out what it real.

Students were given the opportunity to offer additional comments on the survey as well. One student said, "More than half the things I've seen online I've found out were fake."

"It grinds my gears that fake news sites with the intent to mislead the public are taken to be truth," another student said. "Recent events like the election have shown that it really does skew public opinion to give one side an unfair advantage."

Another student, who said they did not care about news, emphasized the negative impact false information can have on others.

"That's how a lot of drama is started, and it's hard on kids and people because once something is out there like that, people will drag it on for a long time," the student wrote.

One student said paying attention to fake news was the equivalent of reacting to a bully: "I think if people stop reacting to it in such an expressive manner, that hopefully the authors will not get the satisfaction that they are looking for and give up on making false news."

As for what skills parents could focus on in the home to improve media literacy, Lind looked to her own experience as a parent and pointed to resources she uses as an educator and mom.

Establishing a dialogue with one's children is key, she said, along with modeling good online behavior.

"Questioning memes when they come through, and not modeling stuff you know to be junk or calling out junk when you see it-I think all of that is helpful," Lind said. "Parents, if they want to talk to their kids about it, they should make sure for themselves that they know what those skills are."

A resource Lind relies on both in the classroom and her home is Common Sense, a nonprofit organization with the mission of helping kids thrive in the modern media landscape.

"We empower parents, teachers and policymakers by providing unbiased information, trusted advice and innovative tools to help them harness the power of media and technology as a positive force in all kids' lives," the organization's website states.

For Lind, being a good digital citizen-or a good citizen in general-means cultivating a wide range of news sources, diverse viewpoints and friendships with those of all political stripes.

"Model for your children, calling attention to things that are true or not true," Lind said. "Sometimes for me, that means acknowledging that even though I might feel a certain way, the facts are laid out a different way. ... We want political discourse. We want people to be able to approach that using logic and facts and effective persuasion, and not manipulation."

Fact or fiction?

Students in Audra Lind's Brainerd High School classes voluntarily took a survey concerning their evaluation of social media posts and their feelings on fake news.

When you see a post on social media, what steps do you take to ensure that what you're reading is accurate? Check all that apply.

Believe it based on who posted it-17

Check the URL of the website or check the website itself-21

Look for an author and date of publication-5

If it "sounds true" I don't worry about it-24

Visit a fact-checking website-3

Google for multiple sources (is it a reputable site? Is it being reported elsewhere?)-28

Consider different perspective (not just the ones that support your beliefs)-14

Other-5

Do you care about fake news?

Yes. We should work to figure out what is real or not and identify sources that "manipulate" us-16

Yes, because we should be able to figure out what is real-12

No. It doesn't impact me one way or the other-23

No. I don't pay attention to the news-13

Other-1

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Tech Savvy: Growing good digital citizens | Brainerd Dispatch

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The degree to which fake news stories are influential is proliferating headlines as of late. Appearing in social media feeds and magnified through sharing by users, the potential impact of false news was graphically illustrated by a Dec. 4 incide...

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Digital Citizenship in a Fake News Society

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Digital Citizenship in a Fake News Society

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Digital Citizenship in a Fake News Society

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As the shouts from all corners of the world repeat the phrase "fake news," my mind instantly swirls to children.

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Key message

Jenny Luca, Head of Digital Learning and Practice, Wesley College, explores the challenges of helping young people to become discerning digital citizens.

What can educators do?

So what can we as educators do to help our young people become discerning digital citizens? How can we help them grasp the workings of social networks, the power of algorithms, and understand the effects a personalised stream of content may have on shaping their thought processes?

To start with, it's imperative that we acknowledge that it is important to find space or place within school curriculum to address how we help our students to become discerning digital citizens. We've entered new territory, and it's territory our profession needs to understand in order to impart learning to our students.

I'd posit that there are many adults with a lack of knowledge about the workings of the internet, and many existing teachers would fall into that category. Hopefully your school community has a Head of Teaching and Learning actively seeking ways and means for discerning digital citizenry to become embedded with the curriculum structure and a committed teacher librarian in your midst who is keeping abreast of change. Information professionals of this calibre are key to assisting teaching staff with the knowledge required. Many would leap at the opportunity to work in a co-teaching capacity with classroom teachers to impart the message, especially if it can be interwoven into existing curriculum offerings.

The Australian Curriculum provides a passage with the General capabilities. Critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability, and ethical understanding all lend themselves as key tenets of what it takes to be a discerning digital citizen.

Creative teachers, who are shaping their curriculum with thought being given to these capabilities, find ways to weave discussion into the threads of their curriculum content. When I taught English classes, I would make way for important discussion about topics affecting young people's lives. I would often begin a class with what would be considered something 'off topic'. What this did was frame the lesson - students would be encouraged to think and share, and this seeded the climate for the learning that would take place that was 'on topic'.

Our profession is a human one - finding time within content-heavy curriculum to build relationships and assist our young people to navigate new territory is never time wasted.

Behind the News (BtN), the ABC TV programme aimed at school children from upper primary to lower secondary, has made a really useful video about fake news and how to spot it. Common Sense Media from the United States also has a very helpful post about spotting fake news.

I'd encourage all educators to take a look at the Common Sense Media site. Their K-12 digital citizenship curriculum scope and sequence can be easily adapted to Australian schools. It provides teachers with lesson plans, support materials and resources that parents can use. All resources within their curriculum are based on the research of Dr Howard Gardner and the Good Play Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

There is an enormous amount being shared to help people grapple with the need to become more discerning in their analysis of web content. I've listed some useful posts below that can help you gain more understanding and find resources that may assist you in imparting the message to students.

Curriculum and syllabus links

English S2

EN2-4A Uses an increasing range of skills, strategies and knowledge to fluently read, view and comprehend a range of texts on increasingly challenging topics in different media and technologies

EN2-11D Responds to and composes a range of texts that express viewpoints of the world similar to and different from their own

English S3

EN3-3A Uses an integrated range of skills, strategies and knowledge to read, view and comprehend a wide range of texts in different media and technologies

EN3-5B Discusses how language is used to achieve a widening range of purposes for a widening range of audiences and contexts

EN3-8D Identifies and considers how different viewpoints of their world, including aspects of culture, are represented in texts

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English S4

EN4-1A Responds to and composes texts for understanding, interpretation, critical analysis, imaginative expression and pleasure

EN4-2A Effectively uses a widening range of processes, skills, strategies and knowledge for responding to and composing texts in different media and technologies

EN4-6C Identifies and explains connections between and among texts

EN4-7D Demonstrates understanding of how texts can express aspects of their broadening world and their relationships within it

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English S5

EN5-1A Responds to and composes increasingly sophisticated and sustained texts for understanding, interpretation, critical analysis, imaginative expression and pleasure

EN5-2A Effectively uses and critically assesses a wide range of processes, skills, strategies and knowledge for responding to and composing a wide range of texts in different media and technologies

EN5-6C Investigates the relationships between and among texts

EN5-7D Understands and evaluates the diverse ways texts can represent personal and public worlds

EN5-8D Questions, challenges and evaluates cultural assumptions in texts and their effects on meaning

English S2

ACELY1675 Identify the point of view in a text and suggest alternative points of view

ACELY1678 Identify the audience and purpose of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts

ACELY1680 Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning and begin to evaluate texts by drawing on a growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features

ACELY1686 Identify and explain language features of texts from earlier times and compare with the vocabulary, images, layout and content of contemporary texts

ACELY1690 Identify characteristic features used in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts to meet the purpose of the text

ACELY1692 Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning to expand content knowledge, integrating and linking ideas and analysing and evaluating texts

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English S3

ACELA1501 Understand that patterns of language interaction very across social contexts and types of texts and that they help to signal social roles and relationships

ACELA1504 Understand how texts vary in purpose, structure and topic as well as the degree of formality

ACELT1795 Use metalanguage to describe the effects of ideas, text structures and language features on particular audiences

ACELY1701 Identify and explain characteristic text structures and language features use in imaginative, informative and persuasive texts to meet the purpose of the text

ACELT1613 Make connections between students' own experiences and those of characters and events represented in texts drawn from different historical, social and cultural contexts

ACELY1708 Compare texts including media texts that represent ideas and events in different ways, explaining the effects of the different approaches

ACELY1711 Analyse how text structures and language features work together to meet the purpose of a text

ACELY1801 Analyse strategies authors use to influence readers

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English S4

ACELA1528 Understand the way language evolves to reflect a changing world, particularly in response to the use of new technology for presenting texts and communicating

ACELA1782 Understand how language is used to evaluate texts and how evaluations about a text can be substantiated by reference to the text and other sources

ACELA1763 Understand that the coherence of more complex texts relies on devices that signal text structure and guide readers (and viewers, etc)

ACELT1619 Identify and explore ideas and viewpoints about events, issues and characters represented in texts drawn from different historical, social and cultural contexts

ACELT1621 Compare the ways that language and images are used to create character, and to influence emotions and opinions in different types of texts

ACELT1803 Discuss aspects of texts, for example their aesthetic and social value, using relevant and appropriate metalanguage

ACELY1765 Analyse and explain the effect of technological innovations on texts, particularly media texts

ACELY1721 Analyse and explain the ways text structures and language features shape meaning and vary according to audience and purpose

ACELY1723 Use comprehension strategies to interpret, analyse and synthesise ideas and information, critiquing ideas and issues from a variety of textual sources

ACELY1724 Compare the text structures and language features of multimodal texts, explaining how they combine to influence audiences

ACELA1543 Analyse how the text structures and language features of persuasive texts, including media texts, vary according to the medium and mode of communication

ACELA1548 Investigate how visual and multimodal texts allude to or draw on other texts or images to enhance and layer meaning

ACELT1626 Explore the ways that ideas and viewpoints in literary texts drawn from different historical, social and cultural contexts may reflect or challenge the values of individuals and groups.

ACELT1628 Understand and explain how combinations of words and images in texts are used to represent particular groups in society, and how texts position readers in relation to those groups

ACELT1807 Recognise and explain differing viewpoints about the world, cultures, individual people and concerns represented in texts

ACELT1768 Experiment with particular language features drawn from different types of texts, including combinations of language and visual choices to create new texts

ACELY1729 Analyse and explain how language has evolved over time and how technology and the media have influenced language use and forms of communication

ACELY1732 Analyse and evaluate the ways that text structures and language features vary according to the purpose of the text and the ways that referenced sources add authority to a text

ACELY1733 Apply increasing knowledge of vocabulary, text structures and language features to understand the content of texts

ACELY1734 Use comprehension strategies to interpret and evaluate texts by reflecting on the validity of content and the credibility of sources, including finding evidence in the text for the author's point of view

ACELY1735 Explore and explain the ways authors combine different modes and media in creating texts, and the impact of these choices on the viewer/listener

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English S5

ACELA1553 Understand that authors innovate with text structures and language for specific purposes and effects

ACELA1770 Compare and contrast the use of cohesive devices in texts, focusing on how they serve to signpost ideas, to make connections and to build semantic associations between ideas

ACELT1635 Explore and reflect on personal understanding of the world and significant human experience gained from interpreting various representations of life matters in texts

ACELT1772 Analyse text structures and language features of literary texts, and make relevant comparisons with other texts

ACELY1739 Analyse how the construction and interpretation of texts, including media texts, can be influenced by cultural perspectives and other texts

ACELY1742 Interpret, analyse and evaluate how different perspectives of issue, event, situation, individuals or groups are constructed to serve specific purposes in texts

ACELY1744 Use comprehension strategies to interpret and analyse texts, comparing and evaluating representations of an event, issue, situation or character in different texts

ACELY1745 Explore and explain the combinations of language and visual choices that authors make to present information, opinions and perspectives in different texts

ACELA1564 Understand how language use can have inclusive and exclusive social effects, and can empower or disempower people

ACELA1565 Understand that people's evaluations of texts are influenced by their value systems, the context and the purpose and mode of communication

ACELA1566 Compare the purposes, text structures and language features of traditional and contemporary texts in different media

ACELA1572 Evaluate the impact on audiences of different choices in the representation of still and moving images

ACELT1639 Compare and evaluate a range of representations of individuals and groups in different historical, social and cultural contexts

ACELT1641 Analyse and explain how text structures, language features and visual features of texts and the context in which texts are experienced may influence audience response

ACELY1749 Analyse and evaluate how people, cultures, places, events, objects and concepts are represented in texts, including media texts, through language, structural and/or visual choices

ACELY1752 Identify and analyse implicit or explicit values, beliefs and assumptions in texts and how these are influenced by purposes and likely audience

ACELY1754 Use comprehension strategies to compare and contrast information within and between texts, identifying and analysing embedded perspectives, and evaluating supporting evidence

References

'5 ways to spot fake news!', Common Sense Media, accessed 29 January 2019

'General capabilities', ACARA, accessed 29 January 2019

'Alternative 3' Wikipedia, accessed 29 January 2019

'Fake news: recommendations', Media Literacy Clearinghouse, accessed 29 January 2019

'You are the new gatekeeper of the news', The Conversation, accessed 29 January 2019

'Digital citizenship' Common Sense Education, accessed 29 January 2019

'Students have "dismaying" inability to tell fake news from real, study finds', National Public Radio (NPR), accessed 29 January 2019

'How to spot fake news (and teach kids to be media savvy)', Common Sense Media, accessed 29 January 2019

'Pizzagate: from rumor, to hashtag, to gunfire in D.C.', The Washington Post, accessed 29 January 2019

'Breaking news consumer's handbook: fake news edition', New York Public Radio WNYC, accessed 29 January 2019

'Obama, with Angela Merkel in Berlin, assails spread of fake news', The New York Times, accessed 29 January 2019

'How to spot fake news' International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), accessed 29 January 2019

'Invisible sieve - The dangers of the internet' The Economist, accessed 29 January 2019

'Facebook to begin flagging fake news in response to mounting criticism', The Guardian, accessed 29 January 2019

'Identifying fake news: an infographic and educator resources', EasyBib, accessed 29 January 2019

'Fake news', Behind the News (BtN), accessed 29 January 2019

'Mission critical: how educators can help save democracy', November Learning, accessed 29 January 2019

'Beware online filter bubbles', TEDTalks, accessed 29 January 2019

'Snopes.com', Snopes Media Group, accessed 29 January 2019

'Students need our help detecting fake news', MiddleWeb, accessed 29 January 2019

'We tracked down a fake-news creator in the suburbs. Here's what we learned', National Public Radio (NPR), accessed 29 January 2019

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Become a discerning digital citizen - how to spot fake news

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Jenny Luca, Head of Digital Learning and Practice, Wesley College, explores the challenges of helping young people to become discerning digital citizens. So what can we as educators do to help our young people become discerning digital citizens?