Below is an element-by-element overview of the entire "Misinformation" lesson. To the left of longer elements, you will find short summaries of those elements. In each assessment element, a yellow highlight indicates a correct answer. Whenever relevant, we also include teacher tips💡and definitions of important words from NLP's word wall 💬*.*
Misinformation - Get Started
<aside> 💡 Teacher tip: Before beginning this lesson, ask your students what they know about terms such as "misinformation" or "fake news." You could have a class discussion or have students individually fill out the first two columns of a K-W-L chart. This can surface both students' prior knowledge and potential misconceptions at the start of the lesson.
</aside>
Sharing stories that are untrue or misleading contributes to the pollution of our digital environment.
"An inflammatory gif of a prominent student activist goes viral following a shooting at her school… An alarming image of a shark swimming on a flooded highway circulates after a hurricane… An announcement offering people of color a free coffee following a racial incident at a Starbucks in Philadelphia… Do you recognize any of these? Which ones are real? Actually, none of them are. They are all false in one way or another.
My name is Claire Wardle. I’ve spent the majority of my career analyzing misinformation and why we tend to believe and share stories that are untrue. We’ve all been fooled by a story or post, only to learn that it wasn’t real. But if we share that information, we can wind up unwittingly contributing to the pollution of our digital environment."
<aside> 💬 Word wall: Misinformation is information that is misleading, erroneous or false.
</aside>
Describe a recent piece of information you’ve encountered online that at first appeared to be true, but later turned out to be false.
<aside> 💡 Teacher tip: Ask a few students to share their answers out loud. After each, ask everyone who encountered the same piece of misinformation to raise their hand. If a lot of students raise their hands, you can point out how far misinformation can sometimes spread. You can also explore with students the ways each rumor circulated between and across platforms (e.g. from TikTok to Twitter, or from Instagram to TikTok).
</aside>
It's time to stop using the phrase "fake news" because it has been used too broadly to be meaningful.
**"**When you hear the term 'misinformation,' you probably think of the phrase 'fake news.' During the 2016 presidential campaign, the term referred to a specific type of misinformation: made-up stories deliberately designed to look like articles by legitimate news outlets. But the term 'fake news' quickly lost its meaning as it was used more broadly in several misleading ways. For example, politicians around the world started to use 'fake news' to describe coverage that they just didn’t like. Soon, the term became so watered down that it lost all meaning. In lumping together all manner of misinformation under the term 'fake news,' we also lose out on some important distinction. I believe that it’s time to just stop using this term. So in this lesson, any time I need to refer to 'fake news,' I’m going to bleep out the word 'fake.'"