Media Literacy and Fake News: Introduction

Presentation for the New Jersey Educational Computing Consortium, January 9, 2018.

Presentation for the New Jersey Association of School Librarians Conference, November 16, 2017.

This 2018 survey by the American Press Institute compared the perspectives of the public and journalists toward their understanding of news and news reporting.

The Executive Summary of Stanford study of the critical thinking skills of students from middle school to college.

A report from the Stanford History Education Group comparing the effectiveness of professional fact checkers, PhD historians and undergraduates in evaluating websites.

Sponsored by Reuters Institute this 2018 report surveyed 74,000 people in 37 countries and focused on the changing patterns of digital news consumption.

Mike Wendling of BBC provides background about the use of the term, "fake news." Included are video clips of the term being used.

Misinformation is nothing new. Here's an infographic from Common Sense Media that traces misinformation back to ancient times.

Published in The Washington Post, November 25, 2016, this article by Robert G. Parkinson describes how some of our Founding Fathers published fabricated stories to turn public opinion in their direction.

Written by Robert Darnton in the New York Review of Books, February 13, 2017, this article traces fake news back to ancient times.

Donald A. Barclay, librarian at the University of California, Merced discusses the history of "information literacy" and the need for collaboration among educators.

Journalist Claire Wardle's taxonomy of the different types of information that are frequently identified as being fake news.

Article written by Scott Shane and published in the New York Times on January 18, 2017 describes the creation of a fake news story.

Education Week produced this 8 minute video about teachers working to educate their students about fake news.

Suggestions of strategies that can be used to identify fake news written by Beth Hewitt on The Conversation, a website dedicated to improve journalism.

This article by Chris Berdik identifies some strategies and resources to teach media and news literacy to teenagers.

Article by Sam Wineburg & Sarah McGrew from the PBS NewsHour reporting on studies that found that most young people have difficulty differentiating between real and fake news and information. Identifies strategies used by professional fact checkers.

This blog posting from the International Literacy Association discusses the need for media literacy education and recommends "Four Moves and a Habit" from Mike Caulfield.

From the Teaching column of the Chronicle of Higher Education, November 9, 2017, this article reports on the most recent study from Sam Wineburg at Stanford University.

A blog posting by Peter Adams on Edutopia that suggests some activities that increase students' news literacy skills.

Article by Kevin Levin (December 6, 2016) from Smithsonian.com that describes some strategies that history teachers can use to encourage more critical thinking of web resources.

Summary of study conducted by Sam Wineberg of Stanford University that examined the news literacy of middle school, high school and college students. Includes a link to the Executive Summary of the report.

Article by the ADL which details how to have discussions with students on the news.

This NY Times article will provide ways into incorporate the teaching of fake news into teacher lesson plans.

Article detailing a 2018 MIT experiment on how news spreads.

Stephen Colbert defined this word in October 2005 in this 3 minute segment from The Colbert Report.