Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Fighting Fake News And Biases With Cognitive Psychology, Marlee Givens, Seth Porter, Karen Viars, Liz Holdsworth

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Fake news, faulty data, and questionable research outputs: how do we find the truth when so much information is uncertain? Part of this problem is cognitive biases in our decision-making process. The mind will create a durable narrative around knowns and ignore unknowns. Scholar Daniel Kahneman (2012) refers to this phenomenon as, "What you see is all there is" or WYSIATI. Another common heuristic, the "availability cascade," causes the mind to prefer immediate examples that come to mind over more reliable information that is less easily recalled. These biases limit the accuracy of the information that people understand, as well …

You Deserve The Truth: Helping Students Understand The Causes And Consequences Of Fake News, Ngaire I. Smith, Heather Cyre

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Can dandelions cure cancer? Is Bill Murray running for President? Was a pizza place in New Jersey running a human trafficking ring? In this age of digital and social media it may be difficult for students to differentiate between authoritative information and fake news.

After a brief presentation on the history of fake news and its prevalence in social media, workshop participants (acting as an early college seminar class) will watch a video about the PizzaGate incident and discuss the phenomenon of fake news, why people create it, and why people share it. Next the class will develop a fake …

Who’S Evaluating The Evaluators? Cognitive Biases, Fake News, And Information Literacy, Jon C. Pope, Kim Becnel

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

In response to the increased attention to “fake news” and “alternative facts” as information challenges in the wake of the recent election cycle, librarians and educators have dramatically stepped up efforts to cultivate basic information literacy skills, especially prioritizing the careful evaluation of online sources of information. While these critical source evaluation skills are an essential component of functional information literacy, the recent emphasis on them is predicated on a model of communication that assumes that the readers of these online sources are capable—and desirous—of making informed, objective judgments about the credibility of an external information source. Rhetorical theories, however, …

The Specific Character Of News Literacy Teaching In Russia And The Dynamics Of The Media Literacy Level Of Russian Students, Svetlana Shomova

First Global News Literacy Conference

This paper provides a short comparative analysis of known News Literacy teaching programs and methods in the structure of universities in various countries. It will focus on topics that are specific to Russian higher education and which are especially significant to the study of news literacy deficits in Russia. Thus, in the course of News Literacy teaching the National Research University Higher School of Economics puts a special emphasis on the consideration of news in historical retrospective and the role of news content in media spaces; the risks and challenges of “news” as a type of text message; discussions about …

Tackling ‘Bias’ And Fake Coverage In The Indian Media, Buroshiva Dasgupta

First Global News Literacy Conference

In India, there are a vast number of vernacular newspapers and TV channels in addition to the standard English newspapers and channels. Their strategies for covering news differ from place to place, language to language as well as their political or business “affiliations”. Unfortunately, in recent times most of the media platforms in India have moved away from their ‘objective’ standpoint. To understand or decipher fact from fiction the first method would be to go for a comparative study of the news items and then try to source out their ‘affiliations’ ! both political and business – to place the …

Customizing News Literacy Course In Different Class Settings, Huyen Nguyen

First Global News Literacy Conference

One challenge for the news literacy instructor/lecture/trainer is to tailor lessons to different class settings. Fortunately, I have had opportunities to design news literacy courses for different class sizes, from small groups to big classes, and for different time durations, from a 3-­‐session training course to 10-­‐ week and 15-­‐week courses, as well as for students of different cultures, from Vietnamese students to Chinese and American students.

In this paper, I primarily review my experience designing and teaching News Literacy courses for two 30-­‐ student classes at Ohio University and University of Social Sciences and Humanities. In addition, I share …

Getting Past “Post-Truth”: Librarians Respond, Vicki Gruzynski, Robin Potter, Madelyn Shackelford Washington, Rebecca Martin, Megan Bresnahan

ACRL New England Chapter Annual Conference

There is concern among librarians that information illiteracy and the rapid spread of false news via social media have changed the information climate considerably, to the point where it feels as though we are witnessing the dawn of the “post-truth” era. Coupled with changing campus climates and a rise in hate crimes post-election, this panel of librarians feels an urgency for librarians to provide support to marginalized students, faculty, and fellow librarians. Librarians dedicate their lives to fostering critical evaluation of information sources through information literacy instruction, collection development, partnerships with campus stakeholders, and many other roles. Librarians are equally …