How A Journalism Class Is Teaching Middle Schoolers To Fight Fake News
Research last year out of Stanford University revealed that students – from middle schoolers to undergraduates – are easily duped by false information they find online. The study goes on to describe this as “dismaying,” “bleak” and a “threat to democracy.”
These same students are the primary consumers of social media, and many of them will be eligible to vote during the 2020 election cycle. How are we to prepare young people to become informed citizens in an era where anyone can publish, and there are political and financial incentives for misinformation?
As a journalism professor who began my own media career as a high school student, I have a firsthand understanding of how teaching journalism can prepare young people to become effective communicators – and can help them sift fact from fiction. Challenges of the age of
misinformation In an alleged “post-truth” reality, language can be used in ways that resemble a war game of wits. Words can cast doubt on previously accepted standards, and shared norms once considered common sense can suddenly be cast as suspect.
Take, for instance, the term “fake news.” Within weeks of it surfacing as a way to describe a rapid rise in internet misinformation, the term was misappropriated by several politicians and pundits to describe a supposedly biased mainstream media.
The 2016 election uncovered the surreptitious power of misinformation and its potential to influence the public. Buzzfeed found that fake news stories significantly outperformed real news stories on Facebook leading up to the 2016 election. One fake news writer was even