What’s News?

I was reflecting on digital literacy this week, and was realizing the massive shift in where people get their information that has occurred over the course of my life. I’m 35 going on a 65, but I grew up in  90s and 00s. I remember my early childhood, my parents (mainly my dad) were avid  news consumers. News came in by the local paper, on the radio (always tuned into CBC) and on the TV in nightly news broadcasts. But by my teenage years, that had began to shift, news began appearing on websites. By my 20s, social media had began to take off and the shift towards a digital mediascape became unstoppable. The challenge to identify credible content was about to become much harder.

The smell test: Educators can counter fake news with information literacy. Here’s how.  highlights a Stanford University study that  “underscored the challenges of media and social media education for kids. Students’ ability to evaluate information on the Internet is “bleak,” according to the report.” Teaching student’s to think critically about who they are consuming content from on social media is a must do for teachers. We can help students identify their influencers and the effects these people have on their identity. I had an idea to do this kind of work in grade 4 attached to outcome USC4.5 : Examine how identity (i.e., self-concept, self-esteem, self-determination) is influenced by relationships that are formed with others. There are multiple indicators in their that I think lend themselves well to digital literacy topics.

Digital literacy has become increasing important as our media and news sources have shifted off the printed page, radio, and television screens, and into the digital world. News sources have become so varied, with our views becoming increasing narrowed.  And the truth is, we like to have our biases confirmed. The Why do people fall for fake news? resource was engaging resource talked about identifying bias in ourselves and our news sources. I think this is a useful tool to teach to our students at the earliest opportunity, so they can become more aware of their own beliefs and how they might have taken form. The resource has fun graphics and videos which I think would be good for students to go through.

Also on the topic of identifying bias, this teacher created Worksheet: Bias in the news was a resource I thought could be useful. I like the idea of having identifying bias in headlines from traditional media sources (CBC, Global, CNN, BBC, Fox, etc etc.) then mixing in social media posts as well to identify the bias their too. I thought this resource did a great job at discussing all the different was that bias can appear (Bias through placement, by headline, by word choice and tone, by photos, captions and camera angles, through selection and omission, through the use of names and titles through statistics and crowd counts by source control). The details on all these ways  bias can appear were great and I learned new things to look for when dissecting an news article.