Integrating Media Literacy into the Classroom: News Media

Fake News: Sources that intentionally fabricate information, disseminate deceptive content, or grossly distort actual news reports.

Misinformation: Information that is false or misleading, 

Disinformation: False or misleading information which is deliberately created with the intent to spread. There is intent. 

Satire: Sources that use humor, irony, exaggeration, ridicule, satire, and false information to comment on current events.

Junk Science: Sources that promote pseudoscience, metaphysics, naturalistic fallacies, and other scientifically false or dubious claims.

Bias: Sources that come from a particular point of view and may rely on propaganda, decontextualized information, and opinions distorted as facts.

Confirmation Bias: When we search for, interpret and recall information in a way that supports what we already believe to be true.

Filter Bubble: A situation in which someone only hears or sees news and information that supports what they already believe or believe to be true. This can be created on the internet as a result of algorithms and personal activity.

Fact: A piece of information that is known to be true, can be proven, or that really happened.

1) This is an activity I use often in the library to allow students to be hands on with evaluating information from sources they typically aren't familiar with. 

-Students are placed into small groups.

-Each group is given a packett of 6 different sources. I usually just print out a front page of the article. (NPR, Mayo Clinic, Pew Research Center, Real Life Nutritionist, The Onion, DC Gazette.)

-They are told to sort the sources into categories. Sources you Definitely Trust, Sources you could Possibly Trust and Sources you would Not Trust. In order to do this they must investigate each source with their group. They are told to go to the source on their computers. I have to remind them not to just read the article or first page but to dig deeper into the actual source. They are allowed to refer to the evaluating websites critera on this lesson. This can take about 30mins to complete.

-After the groups have completed sorting the sources we go through them as a class. I ask why they put a specific source into a specific category. They have to tell us what they found in their investigation. Sometimes groups get stumped and do not come to the same conclusion as me. We discuss this as a class. Discussion can take about 15mins.