Almost three-quarters of young people say social media is an important source of news to them – although there is growing awareness of its trustworthiness only around a third of young people will question what they read. (Ofcom, 2019)

As this content is dependent on being read, viewed or heard online it makes sense to bundle digital literacy and literacy and English experiences and outcomes, such as:

• • Searching, processing and managing information responsibly, TCH x-02a
  • Cyber resilience and internet safety, TCH x-03a
  • Recognise the difference between fact and opinion and progressing to evaluative comments about relevance reliability and credibility with appropriate justification, LIT x-18a

This learning is often taught in the context of ‘fake news’ but ‘false or misleading information’ is a more accurate term. False or misleading information can be potentially dangerous when it relates to medical or health claims and requires learners to be smarter about how they engage with online content.

Educators should help children and young people understand how to engage critically with content the consume, create and communicate.

Learners should understand the risks of deliberate misinformation and know how to identify content that is misleading. They should be aware of how to manage their feeds to reduce the chances of seeing misinformation or harmful content and be able to use the platform’s reporting tools to report this type of content.

More challenging is supporting learners to consider the impact of content they share and the part they play when they share malicious misinformation. Discussions, linked in to PSHE can be an effective way to explore the harms of spreading misinformation. 

These resources can be used to explore the features of ‘fake news’ and deliberate misinformation and how to identify and avoid it: GCF Global resources

There are a number of credible and reliable websites offering fact checks:
Reality Check – BBC News
FactCheck – Channel 4 News
Reuters Fact Check
Fact Check: Political & News Fact Check | AP News
Fact Check Tools (google.com)

For teachers using Microsoft Teams, the Search Coach tool is useful to evaluate search results; each result in a search has a ‘reliability score’ that informs learners of the validity of the source: Microsoft Search Coach

Internet Matters has an in-depth guide on misinformation here: Internet Matters

Information literacy is also a key role of school librarians and they are always willing to support learning about it. Find out more about how school librarians can support information literacy learning.