Spotting Fake News: My personal experience
After reading Dylan Johns’ blog, I felt I could come clean about my news intake. (Thanks, Dylan!)
I used to watch the news and read the newspaper quite regularly. However, after the Pandemic started, I found it caused too much anxiety for me. I now only occasionally watch or read the news. When I see news links on social media, I rarely click on them. I read headlines and decide whether or not it is worth reading. Most of the news I get is from my son at the dinner table (he’s a real news junkie).
Last school year, I taught a “Fake News” unit to a grade 8 class that I saw once a week for 30 minutes. The lessons included defining media literacy and critical thinking, spotting fake news, and creating fake news. Though the unit of study was somewhat disjointed, my objective was to get students thinking critically about what they were viewing on their own social media apps. Most of the students were shocked at how much fake news was out there. Teaching this unit really had me thinking about what I was consuming in my own online activity.
The topic of discussion this week was about new and emerging challenges of literacy in a “fake news” world.
When reading the article that Cymone shared, I was most intrigued by the notion that the role of the audience plays an important factor in whether or not ‘fake news’ is actually deemed fake. If the audience perceives the article as satire or parody, is it still considered fake news? The audience can play a role in co-constructing fake news, if they believe it to be true.
As combating fake news in the classroom becomes more important, reading the article that Holly shared was particularly interesting. It reminds us that our students have as much to teach us as we have to teach them.
Chris’ article about information literacy vs. technology problem, we are once again reminded to heed the warning of not believing everything you read.
In the wise words of Albert Einstein, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”.
About The Author
Brenda Frederiksen
Greetings! My name is Brenda Frederiksen. I am a Teacher-Librarian/Literacy Specialist by day and a parent, wife, and grad student by night. I am passionate about reading and passing along that love of reading to students!
Thanks for the shout-out Brenda, happy to hear I am not alone in the lack of news awareness scene (although my naivete started long before the pandemic)! Also neat to hear about your Grade 8 unit on Fake news, I did a similar unit with Grade 9’s in Media 9 a couple years ago. Take care.
No doubt that literacy plays a major role in spreading or preventing fake news. We all have seen that how Fake News has spread during Covid times. Media, news channels promotes such news which is sad to see. Its good that you are helping students to think critically as this will help them in long run. I liked Chris’s article too as it tells that it is the people who are responsible for spreading fake news not social media. Being a Digital Citizen (Ribble’s nine elements) we should take responsibilities of our comments and what we share on social platforms.
Great post, Brenda! I, too, had to take a step back from the news during COVID. It was just too overwhelming! I also realized that I am a very gullible person, so I have really had to learn to fact check. Later this week, I will be introducing the Tree Octopus to my grade 8s and I am looking forward to seeing where our conversation takes us because I agree that the kids have just as much to teach us as we do them!
Brenda! At least you were teaching about fake news…that’s awesome! I too get my news from family sources, (hubby and sister) they always make fun of me but I agree, there is so much bad/scary/creepy things in the news it could certainly play a tole on someone’s mental health.
I really appreciate that you are teaching about fake news… I believe it’s not a common practice… I agree that pandemic has dragged us far away from reading news because those were the times of the huge amounts of fake news, bad/scary news… Many of my colleagues have also dropped reading the news during this pandemic. Whenever I have a lack of time, I also opt for reading at least headlines and that keeps me updated…
I appreciate your honesty! I too feel like I have taken a backseat to my news intake. Being on maternity leave in the infancy of the pandemic, I watched and read a lot of news and was consumed by what was going on in the world around COVID-19. I mean, that’s all I really had to do. I was at home alone with a baby for most of the days and didn’t have any social interaction outside of FaceTime and phone calls. I finally got to a point where I needed to distance myself from everything happening in the world. It was too much. Too much of the same. Too much of seeing the loss of humanity in many situations, and how the world has really evolved into my kind of world. Were there some stories of great things? Of course. But the negative stories were really highlighted. And because of all of that, I needed a break. I still feel like I haven’t returned to my current events self, but I am okay with that for now. In order to balance all of the plates, some of them need to be put down for a while.
I was actually the opposite of you, Brenda! Once the pandemic started, I felt like I was consuming more news then I had ever been before. I often found that there were so many conflicting stories everywhere that I often had to read through several different resources before I could decide what the real story was. Because of this, I feel like I have identified the resources in my life that I feel are most reliable and now usually go to those resources when I look at the news. I definitely do not read the news as often as I used to, but having those few news outlets that I trust makes consumption much easier.