Fighting Fake News! Teaching Critical Thinking and Media Literacy in a Digital Age

Grades 4-6

Brian Housand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000492972
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Educators have long struggled to teach students to be critical consumers of the information that they encounter. This struggle is exacerbated by the amount of information available thanks to the Internet and mobile devices. Students must learn how to determine whether or not the information they are accessing is reputable. Fighting Fake News! focuses on applying critical thinking skills in digital environments while also helping students and teachers to avoid information overload. According to a 2017 Pew Research report, we are now living in a world where 67% of people report that they get their "news" from social media. With the lessons and activities in this book, students will be challenged to look at the media they encounter daily to learn to deepen and extend their media literacy and critical thinking skills. Now more than ever, teachers need the instruction in Fighting Fake News! to teach students how to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information.Grades 4-6

CHAPTER 1
THE WORLD OF FAKE NEWS:

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003235200-1

It is said that there is an ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. As we consider the world that we are living in today and all that is happening around us, we are definitely living in interesting times. We are constantly bombarded with a deluge of news and information through an ever-increasing variety of technology outlets. From radio and television, to computers and mobile devices, we are seldom, if ever, truly unplugged from the technology and media that surround us.

Today's technology has given us unprecedented access to information and equipped us with powerful tools for creativity and communication. Yet, we must ask the question, "At what cost?" As technology advances and becomes more personalized, do we sacrifice our privacy for the sake of the future? Do we blindly trust in our tools and online resources to provide us with the most relevant and up-to-date information possible? At what point do we begin to question what we are reading online?

As we consider this "ancient Chinese curse," we should also begin speculating about its origin and authenticity. In the digital age, each of us carries a powerful tool for locating information. A quick Google search immediately casts a long shadow of a doubt on the origin of this phrase that many have simply taken for granted for decades. Despite making its way into numerous speeches delivered by the likes of Albert Camus, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert F. Kennedy, there is no solid evidence that this is even of Chinese origin—let alone an ancient curse.

Yet, why have we willingly accepted this quotation as fact? Do we believe it because it fits our schema, or do we believe it simply because we want to believe it is true? Maybe we believe it because it makes an interesting story, or are we willing to believe anything that we read?

I warn you of this ancient Chinese curse because we have always and will always live in interesting times. The interesting times of today are not necessarily that different than the interesting times of yesterday or even 100 years ago. We are all too quick to revel in the "good old days" without admitting that they were probably not as "good" as we remember them. Today's times may seem more interesting and even dire because we are currently experiencing them, or perhaps they seem more interesting because we are beginning to pay attention to what is happening around us.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF FAKE NEWS

As we look at our world today, we hear the constant cry of fake news. Claims come from our social media feeds, 24-hour cable news channels, and even the Trump White House. The rise of such claims and alternative facts during the 2016 presidential election led to post-truth being proclaimed as the 2016 Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year. The term is defined as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief." With 2016 events such as the Brexit vote and the U.S. presidential election, use of the term increased by approximately 2,000% more than its usage in 2015.

As we have always lived in interesting times, the concept of fake news has been around a lot longer than we may have realized.

In a 2016 POLITICO Magazine article, Jacob Soll related "The Long and Brutal History of Fake News" and advised us that, "Bogus news has been around a lot longer than real news. And it's left a lot of destruction behind" (para. 1). According to Soll, fake news began circulating with the introduction of the Guttenberg Press in 1439. News sources of the time ranged from religious authorities and political organizations to supposed eyewitness accounts of sailors and merchants. Yet, there were no standards for journalistic integrity or ethical behavior. Instead, readers had to pay close attention and determine what the real story might be. Because the technology of the day was in the hands of a few, a great deal of value was placed in what was printed.

As printing technology expanded over the next 300 years, so did fake news. By the mid-1700s, "newsworthy" accounts of sea monsters and witches abounded. There were numerous reports by churches and European authorities blaming sinners for natural disasters, including the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal. These claims prompted Voltaire to advocate against fake religious news.

Meanwhile in the American Colonies, Soll (2016) pointed out that even our Founding Fathers were perpetrators of fake news for political advantage, as Benjamin Franklin "concocted propaganda stories about murderous 'scalping' Indians working in league with the British King George III" (para. 10). It was fake news stories such as these that helped to compel colonists to enlist to fight in the Revolutionary War.

Throughout history, fake news has proved to be financially rewarding for its publishers. In the 1830s, there was a rise in popularity of "penny press" newspapers that cost only one cent and featured a narrative style of reporting that attracted a wider audience than more traditional newspapers. In August of 1835, The Sun, a New York newspaper, published a series of stories over 6 days that reported that well-known British astronomer Sir John Herschel had constructed a powerful telescope that allowed him to view life on the moon. The paper provided extensively detailed descriptions and illustrations of the vegetation and animals, including single-horned goats and beavers that for some reason walked on two feet. There were also descriptions of human-like creatures with wings and pyramid structures that formed this advanced civilization. As a result of these fantastical stories, sales and subscriptions flourished. Although many competing newspapers were quick to point out that this was mere fantasy, other newspapers around the world reprinted the stories as fact. The Sun never admitted that the stories were fake news, but instead, the Great Moon Hoax helped it become a successful newspaper.

By the late 1800s, the American public saw the rise of yellow journalism. This was a style of newspaper reporting that emphasized sensationalism rather than factual information. Ironically, one of the greatest purveyors of the surge of yellow journalism was Joseph Pulitzer, for whom the Pulitzer Prize, an award recognizing excellence in newspaper journalism, is named. To increase sales and circulation of The New York World, editor Pulitzer published sensationalized news stories that emphasized crime, disasters, and scandal. In 1895, William Randolph Hearst purchased the New York Morning Journal and began a head-to-head competition with Pulitzer for the greatest circulation. Many believe that Hearst's sensationalized accounts of Spanish atrocities in Cuba helped start the Spanish-American War. According to Soll (2016), "When Hearst's correspondent in Havana wired that there would be no war, Hearst famously responded: 'You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war'" (para. 12).

As technology continued to develop in the 20th century, we began get our news from the radio, and just like what was reported as news in print was blindly accepted, the same seemed to ring true on the radio. On Sunday, October 30, 1938, The Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast the now infamous radio play adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the program simulated a live news broadcast in which New Jersey and New York were under attack by space aliens. Since its original airing, it has been accepted as fact that this single broadcast caused mass hysteria and struck fear into the hearts of the nation. It has been widely reported and believed that listeners panicked thinking that the Earth was actually under attack by invaders from Mars.

However, this was not what actually happened. Since that time, much speculation has been cast as to the actual number of listeners to the program. According to a telephone survey of 5,000 individuals, only 2% reported that they were listening to the radio program oil the night of October 30, 1938. Instead, much of the hype and hysteria was created by the newspaper headlines the following morning. The cover of the October 31, 1938, New York Daily News proclaimed, "FAKE RADIO 'WAR' STIRS TERROR THROUGH U.S." (see Figure 1), and despite the radio program not even airing in Boston, the headline of The Boston Daily Globe read "RADIO PLAY TERRIFIES NATION." The newspaper stories reported mass hysteria and that many feared that the world was coming to an end.

Despite the news stories, there is little evidence to suggest that any of this actually occurred. Instead, it is now believed that the newspapers were all too quick to criticize the unreliability of radio to accurately report news. Newspapers were fearful that they were losing their customers to the new medium. In a sense, newspapers were printing fake news in an attempt to discourage the public from believing what they heard on the radio.

This fight for the public's attention was confounded even further with the advent of the television. The major networks enjoyed little competition for viewers' attention from the 1950s through the 1970s. Yet, that all changed on June 1, 1980, when Ted Turner launched CNN as the first cable news channel. What had once been a 30-minute nightly broadcast of national news suddenly transformed into a 24-hour-a-day need for news. This went on to inspire multiple other cable news channels, including Fox News and MSNBC. As a result of multiple news stations that are always on, these channels have had to devise ways to fill their time with sensationalized stories and political commentary designed to entertain and engage viewers perhaps more than simply reporting the news.

Today, the sensationalism and yellow journalism of the late 19th century is alive and well in supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer, whose scintillating headlines featuring celebrity scandals serve as distractors from the drudgery of our daily lives. The unbelievable and often ridiculous World Weekly News, published from 1979 to 2007, featured fake news stories, such as Bat Boy, the existence of aliens, and Elvis being alive, but its news stories were not much different than the clickbait that is scattered across many of today's websites.

According to a 2016 Pew Research Center study, 62% of U.S. adults reported getting their news on social media. In the survey of 4,654 members of the Pew Research Center's American Trends panel, researchers found that users of Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter were most likely to get news from each of these sites compared to other social media platforms. Two-thirds of Facebook users (66%) and 59% of Twitter users reported getting news from these sites. Meanwhile, 70% of Reddit users are getting their news from that site. Other social media platforms were reported as being used by less than 25% of the respondents.

In a 2017 study from Common Sense Media (Robb, 2017), 853 children ages 10-18 were asked how they got news from each source "yesterday." Figure 2 shows the results in graph format.

As kids get older, they are more likely to utilize social networking sites to get their news. Only 20% of "tweens," or kids ages 10-12 years old, reported getting news from social networking sites, while 47% of teens ages 13-18 did (Robb, 2017).

Figure 1. Fake news in headlines.

Although these numbers are may not be cause of concern by themselves, it is somewhat worrisome that 64% of those surveyed indicated that they only get news from one social networking site, with the most common response being Facebook. Only 26% reported getting their news from two or more sites, and alarmingly only 10% get their news on three or more sites.

These data are indicative of the great migration from traditional news sources to online and social media sources that has transpired since the turn of the century. In the age of the Internet, news and media agencies are on the same playing field with almost any individual or small group of individuals with a moderate amount of web design skills.

Figure 2. How children get their news (Robb, 2017).

Indeed, these are interesting times. As Soll (2016) concluded:

Real news is not coming back in any tangible way on a competitive local level, or as a driver of opinion in a world where the majority of the population does not rely on professionally reported news sources and so much news is filtered via social media, and by governments. And as real news recedes, fake news will grow. We've seen the terrifying results this has had in the past—and our biggest challenge will be to find a new way to combat the rising tide. (para. 18)

THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK

To combat this rising tide of fake news and alternative facts, we must first become and then teach our students to become more critical consumers of the information that they encounter. However, like fake news, this idea is nothing new. Our librarians and media specialists have been telling us this probably for as long as there have been libraries. They have advised us to use multiple sources and to read critically when gathering information. Scientists have cast heavy doses of skepticism in their attempts to discover truth. Researchers have long called for increased rigor in data collection and analysis while pursuing statistical significance in their findings. Although none of this is new, it has perhaps become more urgent to develop these types of skills at a younger age and, perhaps more importantly, use these skills throughout one's lifetime.

As we have already pointed out, access to information through the Internet and various digital devices serve to both expand our access and to complicate matters completely. As we consider what we can do as educators to better prepare our students for the world of today, we will examine four challenges that confront us in the digital age and propose a series of activities to overcome these challenges.

Challenge One: Information Overload

With access to an almost infinite amount of information at our fingertips, it is all too easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information that is available, but is this a new problem? Just as we have seen in the long history of fake news, feelings of information overload have been present in every generation. In 1970, Alvin Toffler described this psychological state as "future shock." Indeed, the world as we know it has changed greatly since 1970, but for those living then, they were interesting times. In order to be success...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Activity Guide
• Chapter 1: The World of Fake News: How Did We Get Here?
• Chapter 2: A New Literacies Framework
• Chapter 3: Identifying Important Questions
• Chapter 4: Locating Information
• Chapter 5: Critically Evaluating Information
• Chapter 6: Synthesizing Information
• Chapter 7: Communicating Information
• Chapter 8: Overcoming Your Own Bias
• Chapter 9: The Boss Battle: Fighting Fake News!
• Chapter 10: Epilogue: Pay Attention
• Additional Resources
• References
• About the Author