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Event Dates

October 23-27, 2023

Email

medialiteracyweek@namle.net

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Misinformation is false or inaccurate information—getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead—intentionally making the misstating facts.

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News and Media Literacy | PBS LearningMedia

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This collection, which includes videos, blog articles, student handouts, lesson plans, and tip sheets for families, helps students identify, analyze, and investigate the news and information they get from online sources. Media literacy is an essential skill for all students across a range of subjects, from Science to Social Studies to English Language Arts.

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Whether you're focused on your classroom, home, community, or constituents, we have a number of resources and tools available to help you advocate for media literacy education. Resource Highlight Teaching students to find trustworthy information needs to become a priority in more science classrooms. Learning to Find Trustworthy Scientific Information,

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media literacy week hs activity packet.pdf

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Did you know the origin of the tongue/taste theory? Watch here for the "telephone" way in which people misperceive and then ultimately perpetuate misinformation. #fascinating

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Why people fall for misinformation - Joseph Isaac

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Ad Fontes Media is the home of the Media Bias Chart®. We rate the news and news-like sources for bias and reliability.

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Can You Spot the Problem With These Headlines? is a TED-Ed lesson that walks students through the dissection of a couple of hypothetical news headlines. By watching the video students can begin to understand how headlines are written to entice readers and how misleading headlines are created.
Byrne, Richard. Practical Ed Tech, 19 Aug. 2020, practicaledtech.com/.

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Sometimes a health headline will focus on a study done in mice, or done with only 2 people, or done by forcing people to run hundreds of miles a day. The farther the study is from who you are and how you act in your real life, the less likely the results will translate directly to you. For example, the Physicians Health Study is a well-known study that was conducted in the 1980s that demonstrated that aspirin reduced the risk of having a heart attack. The observed effect was very strong and lead to headlines such as: "Health; Doctors Confirm Benefits of Aspirin", however this study was only conducted among men, and since it has been demonstrated that the effect may not be the same for women. Does this mean the original study was wrong? Of course not! The researchers were explicit in saying their conclusions could only be drawn among men. This leads to an important question to ask when evaluating whether a study's result will be interesting for me: Who was included in the study? Could I fit in that population?

In our videos, we briefly discuss the design of a study, for example paying attention to whether there is a control group. There are many types of studies but two big types are randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) and observational studies. RCTs are the gold standard, because they let us prove that an exposure, like taking a drug or changing a diet, causes a change in your health. Observational studies can support the hypothesis that the drug or diet causes the change, but you usually need a lot more information. Hill's criteria are a set of extra bits of information that might lend more credibility to an observational study (see Lucy's fun blog post on this for more).

In addition to the design of the study, it is important to notice the sample size.Bigger studies usually let us measure results more accurately, especially when the result is likely to be noisy or hard to get a good handle on. To demonstrate this, a science journalist, John Bohannon, conducted a study that found that eating chocolate lead to weight loss. The problem? This study was only conducted on only 16 participants and John purposefully looked at many different outcomes before he found a significant one. (Check out John's write up of this study).

If the impact of the exposure, like a drug or diet, is pretty small we call that a small effect size. The smaller the impact, the harder it is to reliably find it with a study. When small effect sizes are combined with small sample sizes it makes it really, really hard to figure out if we found something real or not in the data. Similarly, in a very large study, we may be able to detect a very small effect that is statistically significant, but not actually scientifically meaningful. For example, remember the study we discussed that examined whether a new drug prolonged the life of patients with pancreatic cancer - while the result was statistically significant,
the actual effect was only a difference of 10 days.

Finally, it is important to pay attention to the outcome being analyzed. Many times, surrogate outcomes are used. Our example is based on a real case from the medical literature. In the mid-twentieth century, researchers started publishing studies suggesting that a B-vitamin called niacin might help prevent heart disease by raising levels of beneficial cholesterol. By 2009, more than 700,000 prescriptions for niacin were being written in the U.S. every month. There was just one problem. It turns out that niacin doesn't help prevent heart disease - but it does increase the risk of serious side effects. The original niacin studies concluded that the vitamin would reduce the risk of heart disease because it raised the levels of the healthy form of cholesterol, and people with higher levels tend to have fewer heart attacks. But they didn't measure heart attack risk directly. When other scientists eventually did, it turned out that niacin's effect on cholesterol didn't actually lead to fewer heart attacks.

A great way to dig deeper is to read the research article behind the headlines. Read Jeff's blog post for tips on tracking down the original research.

We have only scratched the surface of things to think about when evaluating scientific studies. If you are interested in pursuing this area further, we have a short massive online open course (MOOC) that dives a bit deeper into these issues. The course is designed to be completed by busy students and professionals, with short lessons and quizzes that can be completed on the go. We take real examples from the medical literature and dive into the text to understand the study design, statistical methods, and results. The whole course can be completed in about four hours. We leave out the mathematical detail and focus on the conceptual ideas. Anyone can pick this course up and gain a better understanding of how data and statistics are used in the medical literature. You can find the course on Leanpub: Understanding Data and Statistics in Medical Literature.

Enjoy!

Lucy D'Agostino McGowan and Jeff Leek

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Can you spot the problem with these headlines? (Level 1) - Jeff Leek and Lucy McGowan

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In medicine, there's often a disconnect between news headlines and the scientific research they cover. While headlines are designed to catch attention, many studies produce meaningful results when they focus on a narrow, specific question. So how can you figure out what's a genuine health concern and what's less conclusive?

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Spot the Troll is a quiz game that was developed by Clemson University's Media Forensics Lab as a way to educate people about deceptive social media accounts. Spot the Troll presents players with eight social media profiles. Based on the clues in the profiles players have to decide if the social media profile is genuine or a fake designed to spread misinformation. Players get instant feedback after making a guess at whether each account is real or fake. Whether or not the player is correct or incorrect Spot the Troll provides an explanation the signs that the account was real or fake.
Byrne, Richard. Practical Ed Tech, 19 Aug. 2020, practicaledtech.com/.

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A troll is a fake social media account, often created to spread misleading information.

Each of the following 8 profiles include a brief selection of posts from a single social media account. You decide if each is an authentic account or a professional troll. After each profile, you'll review the signs that can help you determine if it's a troll or not.

Click Profile 1 to get started, or visit the sections below to learn more.

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Welcome to the Spot the Troll Disinformation Quiz

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Each of the following 8 profiles include a brief selection of posts from a single social media account. You decide if each is an authentic account or a professional troll. After each profile, you'll review the signs that can help you determine if it's a troll or not.

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Checkology is a service that is designed to help students develop those skills. Checkology offers interactive modules for students to complete. Each of the modules is comprised of between twenty and forty-seven instructional video clips and interactive comprehension checks. The four of the modules are titled Info Zones, Democracy's Watchdog, Practicing Quality Journalism, and Misinformation. As you might expect, the contents of the modules gets progressively more difficult as each section is completed.
Byrne, Richard. Practical Ed Tech, 19 Aug. 2020, practicaledtech.com/.

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Bad News is a website that offers simulations that show visitors how misinformation is spread through social media. Bad News is available in two versions. The regular version is intended for those who are high school age or older. Bad News Junior is appropriate for middle school and older elementary school students. The difference between the two versions is found in the news topics that are used in the simulations.

In both versions of Bad News players work through a simulation in which they attempt to build a Twitter following by spreading misleading news stories. (I must emphasize that there are no real Tweets sent and you don't have to even have a Twitter account to play Bad News). Through the simulation players learn how headlines, memes, and Tweets are designed to manipulate people and prompt reactions from them. The simulation also shows players how Twitter bots are used.
Byrne, Richard. Practical Ed Tech, 19 Aug. 2020, practicaledtech.com/.

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Can you beat my score? Play the fake news game!

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Drop all pretense of ethics and choose the path that builds your persona as an unscrupulous media magnate. Your task is to get as many followers as you can while slowly building up fake credibility as a news site.

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Factitious is a game that is designed to help students practice identifying real and fake news stories. The 2020 version of the game features stories about COVID-19. To play Factitious simply go to the site and select start. You'll then see an article appear on the screen. Read through the article, click the source listed at the bottom, and then select either the green check mark or red X to indicate whether or not you think the article is a real news story. After you make your selection you'll get instant feedback and an explanation of how you can tell if the article was a real or fake news story.
Byrne, Richard. Practical Ed Tech, 19 Aug. 2020, practicaledtech.com/.