Jennifer LaGarde and Darren Hudgins write: "In November 2019, The Pew Research Center released its findings related to the devices Americans use to access news. As in previous years, Pew found that news consumers overwhelmingly turn to their mobile devices, rather than to a laptop or desktop, to catch up on the news of the day. And yet, when we visit schools around the country to help teachers and librarians develop media literacy lessons, we find the exact opposite to be true. In school, the vast majority of news literacy instruction still takes place with the devices that our kids are least likely to use when they leave our buildings." (Emphasis added.)
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
Wow, think about that last line in the quote from Jennifer and Darren's article! I usually think librarians are the most likely to be teaching the most current technology, yet I would bet most of us teach media literacy using desktop examples.
I can't wait to share this with my 8th graders during their research unit. Yes, when they're researching in class, they're on their Chromebooks, but I want to survey them to see how many do research on their phones outside of school. When we ask students to analyze sources for trustworthiness or bias, we must understand what they're looking at.
Information is everywhere and sometimes it can be difficult to judge how accurate or reliable information is.
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
Another quick checklist to share with students. I am all for whatever will get them to think critically about sources! A three step checklist is better than no review at all.
Adam Satariano and Elian Peltier write: "France is coordinating one of the world’s largest national media and internet literacy efforts to teach students, starting as early as in middle school, how to spot junk information online."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
In the past two weeks, I've had discussions with adults who turned to Twitter to check a news story. As a lifelong newspaper reader, I was baffled by this. We discussed how going directly to a news site would provide a less biased view, less of a self-created filter bubble than checking Twitter. I don't think I convinced them, as they countered with the fact that my news sources might be considered a filter bubble, too!
I do like Sandra Laffont's point about going back to the basics: "what’s news, who makes it, how do you check the sources." It certainly ties in with what we do daily in our libraries!
Dr. Gordon Pennycook and Dr. David Rand write: "What makes people susceptible to fake news and other forms of strategic misinformation? And what, if anything, can be done about it?
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
The key takeaway: "But this “rationalization” account, though compelling in some contexts, does not strike us as the most natural or most common explanation of the human weakness for misinformation. We believe that people often just don’t think critically enough about the information they encounter." [Italics added.]
Critical thinking is so vitally important. Why isn't it the basis of everything we teach?
Although this is not an article about book lists or selection processes for the library, I am still listing it here because its a good article detailing "fake news." I feel that in determining acquisitions we must be careful as to evaluate materials based on their authenticity. In short , I feel like we have to try to eliminate fake news within our media centers as much as possible. Or, better still, we need to teach our young adults how to spot "fake news" and how to determine credible sources.
Alexis C. Madrigal writes: "Americans over 50 are worse than younger people at telling facts from opinions, according to a new study by Pew Research Center.
Given 10 statements, five each of fact and opinion, younger Americans correctly identified both the facts and the opinions at higher rates than older Americans did. Forty-four percent of younger people identified all five opinions as opinions, while only 26 percent of older people did. And 18-to-29-year-olds performed more than twice as well as the 65+ set. Of the latter group, only 17 percent classified all five facts as factual statements."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
It would be an interesting discussion to pair this article with the coverage of the Stanford History Education group's research on students' inability to determine which online resources are credible. Obviously schools do a great job teaching about fact versus opinion. Now we need to step up our instruction on credible sources, using critical thinking skills. I'm placing my bet on the students--the future would be too bleak otherwise.
Joel Gunter and Olga Robinson write: "A loosely-defined network of Russian state actors, state-controlled media, and armies of social media bots and trolls is said to work in unison to spread and amplify multiple narratives and conspiracies around cases like the Skripal poisoning. The goal is no longer to deny or disprove an official version of events, it is to flood the zone with so many competing versions that nothing seems to make sense." (Italics added)
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
A fascinating look into the Russian disinformation campaigns. In the past, a single version of disinformation was shared. Now, multiple sources provide multiple stories over multiple social media platforms. One expert observed that these campaigns mean a person who Googles for information finds so many conflicting versions of an event that they often give up searching, either accepting misinformation or just not following the story anymore. While this story focuses on the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skirpal, it's easy to see how the disinformation campaigns can be used to create confusion around the approaching US elections.
Michael McGough writes: "This week in the world of fake news, a recent satiric post criticizing California Gov. Jerry Brown for passing a fictional law made some readers laugh, angered others, and likely prompted some people to brush up on their math lingo."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
I discovered this article via The Sift, which provides a Viral Rumor Rundown full of examples for discussions on digital and media literacy. Here's a link to their archives. It's well worth subscribing to their newsletter!
Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel J.X. Dance, Richard Harris and Mark Hansen write: "Everyone wants to be popular online. Some even pay for it. Inside social media’s black market."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
A fascinating look at bots and social media. The graphics are first-rate. This would be a great article for a deeper look at social media for high school students.
Known worldwide for her courage and clarity, Christiane Amanpour has spent the past three decades interviewing business, cultural and political leaders who have shaped history. In conversation with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Amanpour discusses fake news, objectivity in journalism, the leadership vacuum in global politics and more, sharing her wisdom along the way. "Be careful where you get information from," she says. "Unless we are all engaged as global citizens who appreciate the truth, who understand science, empirical evidence and facts, then we are going to be wandering around -- to a potential catastrophe."
Insurance scams, rumors of water shutoffs, and fake restrictions on when people can return are all bouncing around the internet.
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
Some current news and social media to share with students to demonstrate why we need to check our sources. Also why, if it sounds too good or too crazy to be true, you're probably right! (Just be aware there's an F-bomb in one of the tweets. I wouldn't share the entire article with students.)
Christa Forster writes: "In the month leading up to our study of Shakespeare’s plays “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Othello,” I use the “What’s Going On in This Picture?” activity in my ninth- and 10th-grade English classes to help prepare students to read the plays and to write the analytical papers that are the culmination of our Shakespeare unit.
The activity also prepares students to think critically and creatively about how to physically embody a character from the play to prepare for the group performance activity they’ll also do."
What a great way to get students to analyze and think critically! Students aren't the only ones who feel uncomfortable when they interact with unfamiliar text or images. Having a strategy to analyze new material can help students move past that initial feeling of discomfort, which is where many of them give up. I love the simplified version of VTS cited here:
Valeriya Safronova writes: "Frank Ocean gave a rare, intimate performance at Panorama Music Festival on Friday that enraptured his fans — and had some unexpected consequences that went far beyond music.
Four days later the event has raised questions around the issue of copyright in an era of viral sharing and what happens to a young, creative business when placed in the spotlight."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
An interesting view of copyright and media literacy. I like this idea from Christine Weller, an intellectual property rights attorney: ' “There’s an open question about whether a short, pithy tweet falls under copyright protection.” Her suggestion: When in doubt, reach out.' I imagine high schoolers would be more engaged in a discussion of this rather than some plagiarized term papers!
The librarians at Washtenaw Community College are awesome! Their presentation can easily be adapted for secondary school students, and everything is shared via Google Drive. I shamelessly admit to coveting those buttons!
Julie Scelfo writes: "By building a platform where anyone can publish anything, social media companies have made it easier to propagate humanity’s darkest impulses."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
A good summary of why we need to teach media literacy! (And a great example of a click bait headline!)
"Use the steps and questions below to avoid being manipulated, fooled or exploited by viral rumors, misleading memes, impostor news sites and fake images."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
A good set of questions to add to a media literacy toolkit for students.
Max Read writes: "How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
Can we tell what's virtual and what's real? After highlighting fake news, fake businesses, fake content, fake numbers, Read notes: "Where does that leave us? I’m not sure the solution is to seek out some pre-Inversion authenticity — to red-pill ourselves back to “reality.” What’s gone from the internet, after all, isn’t “truth,” but trust: the sense that the people and things we encounter are what they represent themselves to be."
We love the internet! It's a wealth of information where we can learn about just about anything, but it's also kind of a pit of information that can be false or misleading. So, we're partnering with Mediawise and the Stanford History Education Group to make this series on Navigating Digital Information. Let's learn the facts about facts!
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
This is going to be a helpful series for our upcoming media literacy unit!
Valerie Strauss writes: "California Gov. Jerry Brown just signed into law a bill intended to promote the teaching and learning of media literacy in public schools, making it one of a handful of states that require such instruction.
The California law requires the state Department of Education to help teachers by providing resources on the subject on its website by the end of 2019. The decision of who should get this instruction and how would be left to school districts."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
Hmm, I see a big opportunity for library staff to step up! This law, which goes into effect in 2019, doesn't require school districts to provide this instruction. I think if we're not teaching digital and media literacy, we are failing our students and creating another gullible generation who share fake news stories as soon as they finish scanning the headline.
Sam Wineburg, the lead author of the Stanford study that showed how abysmally students did when distinguishing fact from fake on the Internet, is quoted in the article: "Forget that kids (and the rest of us) lack the patience to slog through lists of questions. There’s a larger problem. In an age of cheap templates, creating an official-looking Web page or listing a contact are features laughably easy to game. The last time a .org designation meant something was when dial-up modems were state of the art."
Teaching students to read laterally, to determine who is behind the information on the page, is more important than providing a checklist that kids complete with little thinking. And I was so happy to see the Wikipedia technique I share: mine the Wikipedia contents box for the external links, because they can be gold when looking for primary sources!
It's time to throw out the acronyms (I'm looking at you, my beloved CRAB handout) and worksheets, and show students how to grapple with information using critical thinking strategies.
"The reason false information does better than the true stuff is simple, say the researchers. Things spread through social networks because they are appealing, not because they are true. One way to make news appealing is to make it novel."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
Another insight to discuss with students. When reading news shared on social media, take time to consider: Can I find this from another reputable source? Am I sharing it because it evoked some emotion? Am I sharing it to be "first with the news?"
Zeynep Tufekci writes: "What we are witnessing is the computational exploitation of a natural human desire: to look “behind the curtain,” to dig deeper into something that engages us. As we click and click, we are carried along by the exciting sensation of uncovering more secrets and deeper truths. YouTube leads viewers down a rabbit hole of extremism, while Google racks up the ad sales."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
I use YouTube purely for recreational purposes--and the occasional "how do I replace [insert random broken household item]"-- but I just spent some time looking at various controversial topics. Sure enough, click on one anti-vaccination video, and all the recommended videos become anti-vaxx, even though when I did a simple [vaccination] search, the first page of videos were predominately pro-vaccination.
When I teach about doing Internet research I always talk about staying focused, since it's so easy to get distracted by irrelevant sites. My example is always YouTube. I ask students to raise their hand if they've watched a YouTube video for fun. Then I ask them to raise their hand if they stopped at that one video. No one does. Now, instead of just emphasizing why that rabbit hole can cost them research time, I'll be asking students to be more aware of where that rabbit hole might take them.
Andy Newman writes: "One of the most widely viewed pieces during Miami Art Week, the annual spectacle that ended on Sunday, was not to be found at the international art fair Art Basel Miami Beach or any of the galleries around town.
In it, a man from the Miami suburb of Hialeah goes to the bathroom and gives out a yelp. The video implies that when he sat on the toilet, he was bitten on the genitals by an iguana that crawled through the pipes.
The shaky footage shows the iguana peering out of the toilet and the man’s grandmother screaming as she chases it with a hair brush."
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
What a great article to share in a media literacy lesson, although I'd start with the video and grab my students' attention. There's so much to explore here: the artist's use of myth told in modern form, how her work ..."requires the collaboration of unwitting news organizations," (and my favorite, the quote from the actor about not cluing his grandmother in to the entire farce: "Adrenaline keeps you young.")
Be sure to share a previous article by Newman about Zardulu. The two articles would certainly spark conversation. Is this fake news, or a new way to tell stories? I'd love to see our 6th graders use this as a jumping off point to retell Greek myths!
From Claire Cain Miller, on the image above on the left : “It really feels like an image about power, about freedom, about trusting oneself,” said Pam Grossman, director of visual trends at Getty Images. “Who cares what you even look like? Let’s focus on what you’re doing.”
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
What a great article to share with students! (I'm not too worried about the towel-clad woman in middle school.) When I choose photos for presentations to students, I am very deliberate about choosing diverse images of people. This article would be a great conversation starter for a media literacy lesson!
On Thursday, Alex Jones welcomed a guest to talk about how kidnapped children have been sent on a two-decade mission to space. NASA now denies the interplanetary conspiracy.
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
OK, so this article might teeter on the edge of topics you'd feel uncomfortable discussing with middle schoolers, but there's enough here to make a great example for a media literacy lesson. The headline alone would be great a great clickbait example!
"Many sites offer personalized content selections, based on our browsing history, age, gender, location, and other data. The result is a flood of articles and posts that support our current opinions and perspectives to ensure that we enjoy what we see. Even when a site is not offering specifically targeted content, we all tend to follow people whose views align with ours. When those people share a piece of content, we can be sure it will be something we are also interested in.
That might not sound so bad, but filter bubbles create echo chambers. We assume that everyone thinks like us, and we forget that other perspectives exist." (Emphasis added.)
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
Shane Parrish takes a deep dive into filter bubbles. I found several great quotes that I'll be using in a lesson on this topic. Some of the best:
I've always loved The New Yorker cartoon on internet anonymity. Parrish quotes Eli Pariser's book Filter Bubbles: "The new Internet doesn’t just know you’re a dog; it knows your breed and wants to sell you a bowl of premium kibble." What a great way to introduce this topic to middle schoolers!
Another quote from Pariser: "Your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click."
Also Pariser: "Your identity shapes your media. There’s just one flaw in this logic: Media also shape identity. And as a result, these services may end up creating a good fit between you and your media by changing … you."
Pariser again: "Personalized filters play to the most compulsive parts of you, creating “compulsive media” to get you to click things more."
From a study on filter bubbles and voting by Jacob N. Shapiro: "The results of these experiments demonstrate that (i) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, (ii) the shift can be much higher in some demographic groups, and (iii) search ranking bias can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation." (emphasis added.)
A quote from President Obama: "And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it’s true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there."
And finally, a great summary for middle schoolers from Pariser: “A world constructed from the familiar is the world in which there's nothing to learn.”
Perry Bacon Jr. writes: "In the first part of our guide to unnamed sources, we laid out some general tips for making sense of these kinds of stories. In this part, we want to get more specific, to help you to essentially decode these stories. We also want you to be able to know which stories you should rely on based on the different kinds of sourcing used.
So we’re going to divide anonymous sources into six general types and give the pros and cons of each, in terms of reliability. We ordered the types of unnamed sources, roughly speaking, from most reliable to least reliable (at least in my experience.)"
Mary Reilley Clark's insight:
I'm not sure how many of my middle schoolers read news, either in a newspaper, magazine, or online (I am sure I'd be disappointed in the number!) This article would be good to share with high schoolers or middle school teachers who want to broaden their students' informational text reading.
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Wow, think about that last line in the quote from Jennifer and Darren's article! I usually think librarians are the most likely to be teaching the most current technology, yet I would bet most of us teach media literacy using desktop examples.
I can't wait to share this with my 8th graders during their research unit. Yes, when they're researching in class, they're on their Chromebooks, but I want to survey them to see how many do research on their phones outside of school. When we ask students to analyze sources for trustworthiness or bias, we must understand what they're looking at.