One of the biggest news stories of 2016 was the news itself, and more specifically, ‘fake news’.

Read the following i article to find out how students – the author writes about university students but the same applies to school pupils here at Brechin High- can fight back using traditional ‘library’ skills in Information and Critical Literacy –

 

i News The Essential Daily Briefing

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/ ©2017

 

Richard Vaughan, Monday January 2nd 2017

University students should be taught how to spot fake news from real current affairs as part of their academic studies, according to researchers.

Universities are “ideally positioned” to teach students the critical skills needed to navigate the potential pitfalls when consuming news online, particularly on social media, leading academics on the topic added.

The advice comes as concerns around the dangers of fake news have grown, with the issue of dubious news stories dominating the recent US Presidential election and the EU referendum.

Critical literacy

It was even suggested in the immediate aftermath of the election, that the dissemination of fake news on Facebook helped swing the result in favour of Donald Trump.

Philip Seargeant and Caroline Tagg of the Open University and Amy Brown of the University of Nottingham Ningbo in China, have called on institutions to provide students with “digital critical literacy” to help them understand how information is being processed and shared online.

Prof Seargeant said that while students will learn how to discern what information is trustworthy or not as part of their “study skills” in higher education, these tools are rarely applied beyond their studies. “I don’t know whether students apply the same critical analysis of news as they do with their studies. We do a lot of work with them on plagiarism and which sources they should trust when constructing an argument, but we believe the skills should be broader than that,” he said. “How information flows through social media isn’t something that comes intuitively, it is something that is learnt. Our research shows that learning skills to discern what is fake or not more broadly could be very useful in wider society.”

Failing education

He and his fellow researchers are now working on producing a series of educational resources that could be used by universities as a bolt-on module to help raise awareness among students and to allow them to make more informed decisions. Teaching such skills will help students to become “critically engaged citizens”, he added. The research will be published in a forthcoming book Taking offence on social media: conviviality and communication on Facebook.

But Prof Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham’s Centre for Education and Employment Research, said students should already be applying such skills having learnt them through their studies. “University education is failing if it does not teach you how to draw a view from a variety of sources to tell you what is true and what is not,” Prof Smithers said. “Establishing whether something is backed up by evidence is really taught through the subject. Sciences and the humanities rely on firm basis of evidence. That is as true in school as it is at university.”

How to spot fake news:

According to Professor Seargeant, the first way of discerning whether a story is real or not is to cross reference the story on other more reputable sites. If it doesn’t appear anywhere else then it is probably fake. He also suggests using the growing number of fact-checking websites that are being created in a bid to counteract the rise of false news. According to one such website, factcheck.org, another way to check whether a story is true, is to check the URL of the website that is reporting the story. The site adds that a simple method to check the legitimacy is to read beyond the shocking headline, as many fake news stories barely bother to hide the dubiousness of their article. Another tell-tale sign is often the name of the author, if the name sounds like a joke it probably is. Other giveaways include the date of stories; often fake news sites will use a real story but from the past to claim something new is happening.

 

Biggest fake news stories:

• “Pizzagate” False reports that Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her chief campaign aide were running a paedophile ring from a pizza restaurant in Washington DC led to a man entering the pizza chain wielding an assault rifle.
• “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement” The fake news story originated from the website WTOE 5 News in July, claiming the Pope had broken with tradition and given his unequivocal backing to Trump. He had not.
• “Trump Offering Free One-Way Tickets to Africa & Mexico for Those Who Wanna Leave America” Another bogus story featuring the President elect, suggesting Trump Airlines would fly anyone wanting to leave America for free.
• “Corona beer founder makes everyone in Spanish village millionaires” Even the i fell for this story, along with nearly every other mainstream outlet around the world. Antonio Fernandez did not leave £2m to every resident of Cerezales del Condado, a small village in rural Spain.
• “FBI agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apparent murder-suicide” The Denver Guardian conjured up this “exclusive” but the Denver Guardian does not exist.
• “Women Arrested for Defecating on Boss’ Desk After Winning the Lottery” This was one of the biggest fake news stories circulated on social media in 2016.