Digital Education Supplement ISSN 2517-1550
Updated on 01 July 2018
Some erroneous links corrected, and extra resources added at the end!
Illustration by Terry Freedman
There is plenty in the news at the moment about fake news. I attended a Westminster Forum conference about Fake News in April 2018, and I asked the panel whether the fact that reporters sometimes have to work on lots of articles a week (in one case, 500!), had a bearing on the sometimes poor quality of reporting, and the answer came back: “Yes, I think what lies behind this is the economic models…”. I’ll be looking at this as part of my talk at Research Ed.
I asked at the same conference why there wasn’t anyone from the Department for Education there. I’m still awaiting a response.
There’s a transcript of the conference available here: http://www.westminsterforumprojects.co.uk/publication/fake-news-18, but it is not free.
Interesting news and reports about fake news:
At the Westminster Fake News conference I met Wendy M. Grossman, who has been writing about technology for years. She told me of her Net.Wars column, which is well worth looking at. I’ve linked to an article from that in the Useful Articles section.
Fake news harms children’s self-esteem
Americans believe that two thirds of news on social media is misinformation, according to two new reports. Read the article for the links to the reports. (As an aside, is ‘misinformation’ the same as ‘fake news’? I assumed it is, but when someone actually asked me I realised that there is a difference, or at least a potential difference.
Misinformation can be accidental, in the sense that if, say, I tell you that my next book will be ready on 1st July, but I miscalculated how long the proofreading would take, and it is ready on 1st August instead, that would be a genuine mistake. On the other hand, if I tell you that it contains an endorsement by the Prime Minister, that would be fake news. But I suppose that distinction holds only when the news is first announced or created. Once other people start spreading it as well, such as by retweeting my tweets about it, then falsehoods are being disseminated, and it doesn’t make much difference whether that is deliberate or not. There’s an interesting article on Wendy M. Grossman’s website, called Fakeout, in which several people agree to disagree on how to define ‘fake news’.
Their findings are echoed in a recently-published report by Reuters on digital news. The research found that the use of social media for news has started to decline. More information here: http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2018/overview-key-findings-2018/.
Unfortunately, however, a recently-published report by The Literacy Trust found that only 2% of children have the skills to find out whether a story is true or false. More information and a link to the report may be found here: https://literacytrust.org.uk/policy-and-campaigns/all-party-parliamentary-group-literacy/fakenews/.
I attended a talk recently where the teacher speaker said that in his school they have abolished content in the curriculum in Year 7 (first year of secondary school), concentrating instead on problem-solving. I’m not sure how one can solve problems in the abstract. Even worse, he said he considers the lesson a failure if he has to explain anything to anyone. Instead, the pupils find out for themselves or ask each other. So perhaps that school has the answer to the fake news problem: get rid of any facts by which newcomers to the school might evaluate what they hear, and if they are at all unsure if what they’ve been told is correct they can ask a friend who is, presumably, just as ignorant as they are.
You might also like to read Nick Davies’ book, Flat Earth news. It’s ten years old now, but from my investigations I’d say the problems he highlights, encapsulated by the term ‘churnalism’, are even worse now. See Books in Brief, below.
Finally, last year I compiled a list of useful resources and links for teachers, including a fake news infographic. You can find that here: https://www.ictineducation.org/home-page/fake-news-resources-and-suggestions?rq=fake%20news.
Additional resources
Media literacy
Free resources and lesson plans to help schools teach media literacy, from Times newspaper. Register to learn more.
Anti-fake news websites
Known fake news sites
Fake news websites: a collection