FF2017 presentation

1. All the fake news that’s not fit to print...
(or text, tweet or post on Facebook)
Joanna Novick, Laura Pearle and Beth Reardon
Faculty Forum 2017

2. Fake News isn’t new...

3. Social media is “a tool of liberation and
empowerment…people will not stop
communicating; they will always find
new ways to do so”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pierre-
omidyar/social-media-enemy-of-
the_b_4867421.html
Neither is social media

4. Internet
Where we
get
information
How we
interact with
information
How
information
affects us
The Internet changed everything

5. Where we get our information
Blurring the lines

6. Where we get our information
Sometimes, it’s just fake!

7. Location, Location, Location

8. • Recent data points to a serious issue:
Gallup Poll – 2016
✓ Only 26% of Americans (age 18-49) have
even a “fair amount” of trust the media
Media Insight Project - 2016
Trust is personal
✓ When users trust the news sharer:
✓ More likely to believe the facts of a
news story (50% vs. 34%)
✓ More likely to believe the information
in trustworthy/well-reported
(51% vs. 34%)
Pew Research – 2016
✓ Only 10% of Americans (age 18-29)
trust information from national media
sources
How we view sources

9. • Bias not only affects where we go for
information but who is directing us
(or finding us).
How we interact with information

10. Fake
News
propaganda
native
advertising
misleading
or out of
context
information
conspiracy
theory
clickbait
* Which means that separating real from fake has become
increasingly challenging.
And it comes in more than one flavor...

11. Blue Feed, Red Feed
See Liberal Facebook and Conservative Facebook, Side by Side

14. • Information literacy• Technology
How to protect ourselves

15. How to protect ourselves:
Information Literacy
➢ Evaluation of sources is central to controlling what you read and
how you read it!
➢ News Literacy is one component of Information Literacy.
➢ Uses the same strategies
EX: CRAP Test

16. College Students &
Online Evaluation Skills

17. College Students & IL skills
Task given to 25 Stanford Undergrads:
Determine the trustworthiness of material on the websites of two organizations:
• 66,000 member American Academy of Pediatrics, established in 1930 and publisher of the
journal Pediatrics
vs.
• American College of Pediatricians, a fringe group that broke with the main organization in
2002 over its stance on adoption by same-sex couples.

18. • More than half concluded that the American College of
Pediatricians was “more reliable” despite:
• Tying homosexuality to pedophilia
• SPLC – labeled hate group
• Students who preferred AAP – based it on the interface
rather than content
As one student put it: “They seemed equally reliable to me. … They are
both from academies or institutions that deal with this stuff every day.”

19. Browser plug-ins
• First Draft News
Chrome
• Fake News Alert
(Chrome)
• BS Detector
(Chrome, Firefox, Safari)
• RealDonaldContext
(Chrome, Firefox)
• This is Fake
(Chrome for Facebook)
Internal filters
How to protect ourselves:
Tech solutions
Just for fun: Make American
Kittens Again (Chrome)

20. ✓ Less than 20% of students
questioned the source of the post
or the source of the photo.
✓ Nearly 40% of students argued
that the post provided strong
evidence because it presented
pictorial evidence about
conditions near the power plant.
✓ 25% of the students argued that
the post did not provide strong
evidence, but only because: it
showed flowers and not other
plants or animals that may have
been affected by the nuclear
radiation.
Does this post provide strong evidence about the conditions near the
Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant?

21. HOWEVER…
• The more students are
required to ask these
questions:
• the more automatic (and
seemingly less onerous) this
process will become.

22. Question Everything
Realistic
Pictures
Realistic-looking sites

23. Corroboration is key
✓ Find more than 1 source that supports a news story
▪ Trusting the media may seem more ‘doable’ if relying on
several verified sources
✓ Expand your sources
▪ Leave the filter bubble
▪ Get more than one side…. (because there probably is one).

26. We’re here to help
We can
• Help you craft a lesson for your students in how to use the
CRAP test
• Provide a range of resources from different perspectives
(print and digital) for evaluation practice
• Share tech tools that might help determine the
perspective/bias of the site or resource
Use our Resource Guide:
http://libguides.milton.edu/FakeNews