by Cody Hennesey, E-Learning Librarian
There has been a fascinating and disturbing public conversation about the spread of “fake news” ever since the November elections. Commentators on both the left and the right decry the fake news phenomenon, but point to different sources for the problem:Russian hackers,the mainstream media,conspiracy theorists,Twitter bots,U.S. intelligence agencies, and unscrupulous businesses such asDisinfomedia have all been blamed. While the role platforms such as Google and Facebook play in the spread of false and misleading information may add fascinating new wrinkles to the story, the fake news phenomenon is, in fact, nothing new. Media literacy educators have been addressing misinformation and disinformation in the classroom for years.
So how do we help our students distinguish fake news from the real? And what, if anything, do students need to understand about how technologies such as the Facebook newsfeed work, in order to be literate in a digital society?
Context is everything
Fortunately, the foundation for evaluating sources has not changed at all: if you can help your students identify, and think critically about, a particular source and its context, it’s far less likely that they’ll be fooled by false information.The library guide to evaluating resources can help students ask essential questions about a source’s authority, purpose, publication and point of view. These questions help whether they’re evaluating a politician’s tweet, an article in the New York Times, an unattributed infographic online, or a scholarly journal article.
Click the link!
Unfortunately, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, in the interest of keeping users on their site, routinely decontextualize the “content” that they serve in their feeds. Research has shown that college students commonly ignore the agendas of Twitter users (such as MoveOn.org) when evaluating a tweet’s usefulness as a source. In the same study, more than half of the participants neglected to follow a link on Twitter to an article that provided richer context. Before liking, sharing, retweeting, quoting, or citing any given link to a news item on social media, it is essential to follow the link and learn more about the source itself!
Understand your own behavior on the platform
Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter actively discourage the kind of thoughtful reflection that provides the cornerstone for literate and responsible behavior online. The imperative to like, share and comment on content provides users with immediate actions to take instead of seeking more context or a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. While an unending deluge of information in our feeds seems to leave us with no other option but to quickly respond and move on--we couldn’t possibly read every article--in fact, each action we take online involves a choice and has real consequences. To share or like a “news item” on Facebook or Twitter is, among other things, to vouch for it in your network, to tell the platform to show you more stuff like it (including ads), and to send the user who posted the content a virtual pat on the back. Balancing these consequences can be tricky. To take those actions in the blink of an eye, before engaging meaningfully with the content, is one major cause of the rapid proliferation of fake news online. There is a growing need to approach our online worlds more mindfully: to understand when and why we go online, to consider carefully the content we’re willing to vouch for, and to actively choose what to ignore.
What you can do
The Library can help bring information and media literacy lessons to your classroom:
-
Contact your subject librarian to discuss options for visiting your class, creating an online course guide, and/or help developing assignments to address these issues. Or use our online form to request library instruction
-
Incorporate the library’s guide to evaluating resources when scaffolding research assignments. Ask students to answer some of these questions for an annotated bibliography or as part of a class discussion.
-
Ask your students to use a wide range of specific sources, from scholarly journal articles to tweets, in their research assignments. This will encourage students to critically evaluate media they may otherwise overlook as living outside of the scholarly sphere.
Upcoming campus events on fake news
-
Separating fact from fantasy: Is fake news undermining the truth? Thu, Jan 19th, 5:30-7pm; 310 Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai HallThe University Library, the Graduate School of Journalism, and Public Affairs have partnered to present a multidisciplinary panel on the proliferation of fake news online and what is to be done about it – technically, politically, legally and practically. Moderated by Journalism Dean Edward Wasserman and featuring panelists Adam Mosseri (VP of the Facebook News Feed), Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist and philanthropist supporting journalism ethics), Laura Sydell (NPR’s Digital Culture Correspondent), Catherine Crump (co-director of Berkeley’s Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic), and Jeffrey MacKie-Mason (UC Berkeley’s University Librarian). RSVP here.
- Workshop: Fake News and Media Literacy in the Classroom
Date TBA, Academic Innovation Studio (AIS), 117 Dwinelle
The Library, AIS, and the Center for Teaching and Learning will host brief talks and a discussion in February to highlight how instructors address online sources, misinformation, confirmation bias, echo chambers, filter bubbles, fake news and related topics in their classrooms. Keep your eyes peeled for more information on this soon!