IT Infrastructure & Management

‘Fake News,’ Bogus Tweets Raise Stakes for Media Literacy

By Benjamin Herold — December 08, 2016 7 min read
"Fake news" sites, such as the three shown above, are becoming increasingly prevalent, fueling concerns that schools need to make the teaching of media literacy a top priority.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Media literacy is suddenly a front-burner issue for schools, thanks to the recent presidential election, a spate of reports on “fake news,” and new research demonstrating just how ill-equipped young people are to critically evaluate information they encounter online and via social media.

As a result, educators find themselves behind the eight ball, expected to help students negotiate everything from internet hoaxes, to partisan policy advocacy disguised as unbiased news, to a President-elect who has used Twitter to spread baseless claims originating in unfounded conspiracy theories.

The stakes are high, contend the Stanford University researchers behind a widely cited recent study, “Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning.”

“We worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish,” the group wrote.

Such concerns aren’t entirely new. For years, researchers have documented students’ widespread inability to gauge the reliability and trustworthiness of online information. In 2006, for example, University of Connecticut researcher Donald Leu conducted a study in which middle schoolers unanimously fell for an internet hoax about a made-up endangered species—an octopus that lives in trees.

Last year, Leu’s New Literacies Research Lab found that fewer than 4 percent of 7th graders could correctly identify the author of online science information, evaluate that author’s expertise and point of view, and make informed judgments about the overall reliability of the site they were reading.

Educators and advocacy groups have responded by promoting the notion of “media literacy.” The term generally refers to the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create information using multiple forms of communication, with the larger goal of creating informed and responsible citizens. A coalition of nonprofit organizations announced last month a campaign to lobby states to pass new legislation that would promote such instruction in schools.

Ultimately, experts say, the best antidote to the free-for-all of online information is a culture of critical thinking. They also want to spread specific strategies for helping students spot fake news, consider the sources of online content, weigh the evidence behind claims, and compare competing points of view.

But the “decimation” of school libraries, an over-emphasis on standardized test preparation, and slow-to-evolve teacher-preparation efforts have left the K-12 sector struggling to keep pace with the communications technologies that dominate their students’ lives, said Leu.

“We’re not even close to preparing citizens who can continually evaluate online information to make informed decisions about their lives,” he said.

‘Misleads and Blinds Us’

In recent weeks, stories about “fake news” have garnered considerable national attention.

Prior to the presidential election, for example, BuzzFeed News identified more than 100 such sites (all supporting then-candidate Donald J. Trump) being run from a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Two weeks later, BuzzFeed reported that 20 top-performing election-related stories from “hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs” generated more engagement on Facebook during the critical months of the presidential campaign than the 20 best-performing election stories from such major news outlets as the New York Times and NBC News.

Helpful Resources

Educators, librarians, journalists, and advocacy organizations have developed resources to help schools understand and teach concepts and skills related to media literacy and digital citizenship. Some of the most popular resources include:

  • Core Principles of Media Literacy Education and Media Literacy Resource Hub, National Association for Media Literacy Education
  • K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum, Common Sense Media
  • Position Statement on Media Literacy, National Council on the Social Studies
  • CML MediaLit Kit, Center for Media Literacy
  • Digital Citizenship Utah Resources Library
  • Teaching Resources from the Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island
  • Media Literacy Clearinghouse, Frank Baker
  • How to Spot Fake News, FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center
  • Digital Resource Center, Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University

Source: Education Week

And last week, a gunman entered a Washington pizza shop aiming to “self-investigate” an unfounded internet conspiracy theory that had been shared on Twitter by the son and chief of staff of Gen. Michael Flynn, nominated by President-elect Trump to be the country’s National Security Advisor. (Trump later dropped the younger Flynn from his transition team, and Gen. Flynn has drawn fresh criticism for sharing other false information via social media.)

Still, fake news isn’t the most pressing challenge confronting schools, said Sam Wineburg, a Stanford education professor who helped lead the university’s recent study.

Far more worrisome, Wineburg said, is the prevalence of private groups pushing their own agendas under the guise of unbiased news.

As part of the Stanford study, for example, the researchers presented middle schoolers with a screenshot of the homepage for the website Slate.com. Included on the page was a “native advertisement”—an ad designed to look like a news story, but labeled with the words “sponsored content.” More than 80 percent of the students in the study believed the ad was a real news story.

High schoolers, meanwhile, were asked to compare the headlines and graphics associated with two pieces of science-related content on the website of news outlet The Atlantic. Both dealt with climate change. The first was a traditional news story, and the second was sponsored by Shell Oil Company. Nearly 70 percent of the students in the study argued that the Shell advertisement was the more reliable source of information.

“On every policy issue that has an impact on the daily life of ordinary citizens, there are private interests working to sway public opinion by pretending to be something they’re not,” Wineburg said. “It misleads and blinds us.”

Asking Key Questions

For schools, media literacy is an “enduring issue” that predates social media and the internet, said Lawrence Paska, the executive director for the National Council for the Social Studies, a membership association that supports social studies education in K-12 and higher education.

Whether reading a printed book, a newspaper article, or a Facebook post, it’s important that students be able to “ask key questions, compare competing claims, assess credibility, and reflect on one’s own process of reasoning,” according to the group’s position statement.

A first step, Paska said, is making sure that both students and teachers have an effective framework for evaluating the credibility of information they encounter. He pointed to a set of questions developed by the National Center for Media Literacy Education: Who paid for this? When was this made? Who might benefit? What is left out of this message that might be important to know? How was this shared with the public?

NCSS also believes that students learn to become critical consumers of information by researching, planning, and making their own media messages.

That kind of “constructivist” approach is also embraced by Claire Beach, a veteran teacher, filmmaker, and media-literacy advocate who was a driving force behind a recently enacted law in Washington state requiring the office of the state superintendent of public instruction to lead an effort to devise and share with schools best practices around media literacy and digital citizenship.

“Once you start giving students the tools to understand when they’re being manipulated, you’re blown away with the changes you see,” Beach said.

The same principles can be applied to magazine ads, reality television shows, and viral social media posts. But trying to keep up with the sheer volume of media, information, technology, and platforms now available can leave even the most committed teachers exhausted, she said.

“It’s like going from sitting down to running marathons,” Beach said.

To help keep up, Stanford’s Wineburg and the University of Connecticut’s Leu advised that students need to learn and practice new skills that are specific to reading new digital media.

One example: Leu suggested that when preparing reference lists that include online information, students should be expected to include a short written description of why a source was selected and how they determined it to be credible.

Students should be taught to distinguish between “verified” and “unverified” accounts on social media, a technique that can be used to help identify legitimate sources of information. (The Stanford study found that high school students appeared to be largely unaware of such conventions.)

The Bigger Challenge

But the bigger challenge for schools, the researchers agreed, is keeping pace with the rapid—and often troubling—shifts in the broader news and media landscape.

Two weeks after winning the presidential election, for example, President-elect Trump sent a message to his 16 million-plus Twitter followers. It said that he had “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”—a baseless claim, originally made on websites that promote unfounded conspiracy theories, that was quickly debunked by numerous news organizations.

Of course, politicians and celebrities from across the political spectrum have long been guilty of spin, misinformation, and outright lying.

But the example of Trump’s tweet (and others like it) helps show how the current landscape is different, Leu and Wineburg pointed out. The internet and social media have made it far easier for powerful entities to directly and quickly spread false or misleading information far and wide. When such entities also suggest that factual accuracy of public information and statements matters less than the emotions they inspire, democracy itself can be threatened, the two researchers contend.

The good news, the researchers said, is that the internet is also the best fact-checking tool ever invented.

“We have a bounty of information before us,” Wineburg said. “Whether it makes us more thoughtful or more stupid is a matter of our educational response to this challenge.”

A version of this article appeared in the December 14, 2016 edition of Education Week as Media Literacy vs. Bogus News

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School & District Management Webinar
Harnessing AI to Address Chronic Absenteeism in Schools
Learn how AI can help your district improve student attendance and boost academic outcomes.
Content provided by Panorama Education
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Science Webinar
Spark Minds, Reignite Students & Teachers: STEM’s Role in Supporting Presence and Engagement
Is your district struggling with chronic absenteeism? Discover how STEM can reignite students' and teachers' passion for learning.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
Recruitment & Retention Webinar EdRecruiter 2025 Survey Results: The Outlook for Recruitment and Retention
See exclusive findings from EdWeek’s nationwide survey of K-12 job seekers and district HR professionals on recruitment, retention, and job satisfaction. 

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

IT Infrastructure & Management Cybersecurity Demands Are Growing. Funding Isn't Keeping Pace
State education leaders worry funding for cybersecurity isn’t enough to cope with the worsening problem of attacks on schools.
2 min read
Dollar Sign Made of Circuit Board on Motherboard and CPU.
iStock/Getty
IT Infrastructure & Management Sizing Up the Risks of Schools' Reliance on the 'Internet of Things'
Technology is now critical to both the learning and business operations of schools.
1 min read
Vector image of an open laptop with octopus tentacles reaching out of the monitor around a triangle icon with an exclamation point in the middle of it.
DigitalVision Vectors
IT Infrastructure & Management How Schools Can Survive a Global Tech Meltdown
The CrowdStrike incident this summer is a cautionary tale for schools.
8 min read
Image of students taking a test.
smolaw11/iStock/Getty
IT Infrastructure & Management What Districts Can Do With All Those Old Chromebooks
The Chromebooks and tablets districts bought en masse early in the pandemic are approaching the end of their useful lives.
3 min read
Art and technology teacher Jenny O'Sullivan, right, shows students a video they made, April 15, 2024, at A.D. Henderson School in Boca Raton, Fla. While many teachers nationally complain their districts dictate textbooks and course work, the South Florida school's administrators allow their staff high levels of classroom creativity...and it works.
Art and technology teacher Jenny O'Sullivan, right, shows students a video they made on April 15, 2024, at A.D. Henderson School in Boca Raton, Fla. After districts equipped every student with a device early in the pandemic, they now face the challenge of recycling or disposing of the technology responsibly.
Wilfredo Lee/AP