fake news poster assignment

Posted by Hervé Matine on April 16th, 2021

Projects / FAKE NEWS!

100 posters fighting fake news

Fake news might feel like a recent development that has only come to prominence since the election of one politician who shall not be named, but the practice of spreading rumours and misinformation is as old as the printed word.

People have always twisted the truth, or simply told lies, to get what they want (or change the world). But now we have the ability to share information faster and wider than ever before. It used to be only a few media outlets or government sources that could shape public thought, but now everyone can.

And unlike the media or government, none of us are held accountable for what we post. As there are few laws or fines that can be thrown at us for posting lies, there is no incentive to act responsibly in the public sphere. Get likes (or votes) first, worry about potential consequences later. If the self-styled leader of the free world can’t be held to account for regularly tweeting and spreading blatant untruths, then what stops everybody else from doing the same?

The News Literacy Project

Five types of misinformation

The poster linked below identifies and defines five types of misinformation:

• False context
• Impostor content
• Manipulated content
• Fabricated content

Definitions and examples of each type of misinformation are included in the poster linked below. This poster was adapted from the “ Misinformation ” lesson on our Checkology® virtual classroom . Use it with that lesson or on its own.

Downloadable Resource

• Poster: Five types of misinformation

Related Resources

"TRUST ME" classroom guide: A unit on manipulation and misinformation

This is a guide for educators to use with the feature-length documentary “TRUST ME."

"TRUST ME" discussion guide on manipulation and misinformation (collegiate guide)

Misinformation is all around us, and it has real-world consequences.

Should you share it?

The best way for you to help reduce misinformation online is to avoid sharing it.

Fighting falsehoods on social media

Quiz: How much do you know about social media platforms’ misinformation policies?

Sanitize before you share

Misinformation swirling around the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of consuming and sharing online content with care.

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Fake News, Misleading News, Biased News: Assignments on Evaluating Sources

• Evaluating Sources
• Assignments on Evaluating Sources
• Terms and Definitions
• Open Textbooks
• Fact-Checking Sites and Plug-Ins
• Coronavirus COVID-19
• Fake News and AI

Assignments

• Caulfield, Mike. The Four Moves: Adventures in Fact-Checking for Students
• CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments). Evaluating news sites: Credible or Clickbait?
• McCormick Foundation. Introduction to news literacy: Structured engagement with current and controversial issues.
• University of Delaware. Curing fake news phobia (Google Doc with lesson plan - by Lauren Wallis)
• University of Texas El Paso. News gathering and investigation: An evaluation exercise
• Whiting, Jacquelyn. (2019, September 4). Everyone has invisible bias. This lesson shows students how to recognize it. EdSurge.

More Assignments

C-SPAN Classroom: Lesson idea: Media Literacy and Fake News

SchoolJournalism.com   News  and media literacy lessons.

Walsh-Moorman, Elizabeth and Katie Ours. Introducing lateral reading before research MLA Style Center. (Objectives include identifying credibitilty and/or bias of a course, identifying how professional fact-checkers assess iinformation vs a general audience.)

• The Media Manipulation Casebook Includes methods, definitions of terms related to misinformaiton, disinformation, and media manipulation.

A Course on News Literacy

Making Sense of the News: News Literacy Lessons for Digital Citizens   A six week course offered by The University of Hong Kong & The State University of New York via Coursera,  Audit the course  for free. Resources include a glossary of terms such as bias, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias,  propaganda, selective dissonance, verfication, etc.  

News Literacy. Digital Resource Center. Stony Brook University

Stony Brook University. Digital Resources Center.   The 14 Lessons   This course pack consists of lessons that can be taught in sequence or separately and cover topics such as verification, fairness and balance, bias, etc. This material is the basis for the Coursera course (above) on news literacy.

Fake New: Curriculum. Cal State University Long Beach

• Fake News: Curriculum Curriculum about fake news, curriculum guides, presentations; instructional strategies from librarian Lesley Farmer.

Fake News in First-Year Writing - Paul Corrigan

• Corrigan, Paul T. Fake News in First-Year Writing. Writing Commons.org A description of a first-year writing course that integrates feeling and fact-checking with a description of the writing projects.

Need to Evaluate a Source? Try a Worksheet

• Evaluating Web Sites: A Checklist (University of Maryland)

Quality of News Sources - You Decide!

Vanessa Otero - a patent attorney - made a chart with her views on various news sites - and you can too! She put out a blank version so you can decide. See her blog post on  news quality   and her chart on Twitter  

Valenza, J.  (2016, November 26).   Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a "post-truth" world.   School Library Journal.  

A course from University of Washington, Seattle, WA

• Calling Bullshit - Course Syllabus A proposal for a course by two professors from University of Washington, Seattle meant to teach students how to recognize. bullshit. "Bullshit is language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence."
• Check, Please! Starter Course "In this course, we show you how to fact and source-check in five easy lessons, taking about 30 minutes apiece. The entire online curriculum is two and a half to three hours and is suitable homework for the first week of a college-level module on disinformation or online information literacy, or the first few weeks of a course if assigned with other discipline focused homework." This course has been released into the public domain.
• Real vs. Fake. Science vs. Pseudoscience. A course syllabus Fall 2019 A course by Dr. Douglas Duncan, University of Colorado Boulder

A course from University of Michigan on fake news

• Fake News, Lles, and Propaganda: The Class An entire seven week course developed by librarians at the University of Michigan.

Learning Tools Suggested by Richard Byrne

Learning tools suggested by Richard Byrne in his Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week .

• Can You Spot the Problem with These Headlines? A TED-Ed lesson.
• Checkology: A free version with interactive modules (that become increasingly difficult.)
• Civic Online Reasoning: Lesson plans From the Stanford History Education Group. (SHEG). Lessons on lateral reading with fact-checking organizations, who's behind the information? What's the evidence? Create a free account to the SHEG to access these lessons.
• Spot the Troll A troll is a fake social media account, often created to spread misleading information.- Learn to spot them! From Clemson University's Media Forensics Lab
• This One Weird Trick Will Help You Spot Clickbait. A TED-Ed lesson
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• Last Updated: Nov 12, 2024 5:13 PM
• URL: https://libguides.hccfl.edu/fakenews

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Fake News Poster

Help users weed out fake news stories and promote critical thinking with these helpful tips for evaluating information. With the proliferation of fake news today, these items show how users can examine social and news media more carefully to avoid hoaxes and misinformation.

Special thanks to author Joanna M. Burkhardt, professor and head librarian at the University of Rhode Island (URI) branch libraries in Providence and Narragansett.

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