Christen Gall, 29, Regina, SK. Finds Blood Relation to Taylor Swift…
AH! GOTCHA!!
Let’s talk a little bit about fake news… Yes, this includes satire, clickbait, and spreading wrong or incorrect information through news articles. This is happening so much on social media and online platforms that sometimes it can be challenging to determine whether something is real or fake.
If you watch Jersey Shore Family Vacation, you should recognize this photo.
While my headline may have been easy to spot as a fake news report, these articles have become difficult to spot in the real world. People have gotten so good at using these types of headlines for clout. It’s clickbait headlines like these that get people engaged and interacting with your posts so a lot of pages do this intentionally to gain followers and grow their audience.
In the article What Is Fake News? they describe fake news as a “hoax or deliberate spread of misinformation with the intent to mislead” which just seems wrong, but now a days people don’t have a great meter for right and wrong. As long as their social media platform is booming, who cares right? The article also speaks of how easy it has become to create and fake news seems to spread quickly. According to the article people fall for fake news because:
- a growing decline in trust of the media and government
- people can now create content unburdened by the layers of editing and fact-checking that news organizations adhere to
- content is aggregated into a single “news” feed – mixing updates from friends and family with identical-looking links to stories across the web
- lower attention spans
- fake news stories appeal to our emotions
- proliferation of internet bots
So as an aspiring teacher, what can I do to teach my students how to identify real news vs. fake news? Well I was reading another article: The Smell Test: Educators can counter fake news with information literacy. Here’s how. The article gave a variety of helpful suggestions to help educate your students and amongst those, the big one was for librarians, because “Librarians are always our front line” because they have the necessary training to teach media and news literacy.
Another resource I came across was this website: The lowdown which shares many resources including lesson plans on teaching digital literacy. I reviewed some of these lessons plans and found that they would be great for my ideal grade level (grade 3-6) because they involve a lot of critical thinking and discussions. I would like to find something that would work for younger grades as well, because the younger they start the easier it will be to maintain as they grow up.
When it comes to fake news, you need to make sure as a teacher, you are doing everything you can to help your students identify the differences between what is real and important and what is fake and/or satire so they become competent digital citizens.
So what do you think? Is it real or fake?
Awww Damnit! you almost had me there!
I think you’re right about a bunch of things here. But I think the whole “fake news” things has sort of come to fruition because we can see in real time what his happening with Tik Tok and X and other platforms and when we get a very biased news source after we’ve seen with our own eyes what is happening and it comes across as fake. Especially when the talking heads all the say the same thing.
Rob
Hello Christen. I love the example you gave with the clickbait headline. As future educators, it’s crucial that we start teaching students how to spot misinformation early on, especially with how prevalent it is on social media and the internet. I also appreciate that you’re looking for resources that would work for younger grades too. I agree that the earlier we start, the easier it will be for them to navigate the digital world as they grow.