FRIEND OR FAUX? Teaching students to separate fact from fiction in the age of Fake News.

Prairie Public Education Services Our mission is to help kids succeed in school and in life. We promote school-readiness through free educational materials and digital tools such as our learning apps. We provide trainings to K-12 educators, childcare providers and parents on how to best use our resources. And, yes, we bring Curious George to schools too! J

Tammy Swift, Education Services Associate Graduate of NDSU; degree in mass communications. 25+ years as professional writer. 17 years in newsrooms. Dog lover, baker, columnist. tswift@prairiepublic.org

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. Thomas Jefferson, 1807

Fake news: It s old news. In 1835, the New York Sun enjoyed a big boost in circulation when it published a six-part series on the supposed discovery of batlike men and biped beavers living on the moon.

You ve come a long way, baby By the late 20 th century, journalism enjoyed a much better reputation, thanks to journalism schools, increased emphasis on objective journalism, and important investigative stories like Watergate. Of course, there were always exceptions.

Then came the internet, and the rules changed.

Some of it was good. Democratized communication. New voices and styles, exciting technology. More people reporting=more enterprise, more investigation, more oversight. A compelling alternative to the dry rigidity of journalism. Affordable to produce and to consume. Immediate, widespread access and distribution.

Some of it wasn t. Untrained, sometimes irresponsible, biased or malicious news-gatherers. Less attention to attribution, factchecking or libel laws. Anonymity, which often doesn t bring out the best in us. The perfect venue for advertisers, opportunists and propagandists. More information, but also more misinformation.

Which brings us to where we are now.

Who do you believe?

and WHAT do you believe?

How do our kids get their news? Children prefer to get it from social media (39%) Teens: Facebook Tweens: YouTube 36% prefer getting news from family, teachers or friends Only 24% prefer getting news from traditional media.* *Report from: Common Sense Media

Unfortunately, social media is a major purveyor of fake news.

Platforms are fighting back Google: Allows users to flag potentially false stories as disputed, triggering an independent review. Adjusted news rankings to prioritize known sites over less established ones. Banned publishers with a record of spreading bad information. Facebook: Recently updated algorithms to preemptively spot potential fake stories. Removing fake accounts. Taking steps to keep bots, which falsely amplify some types of content, off its platform.

Imagine what it s like for the young, lessexperienced news consumer

In reality More than 80% of middle school students believed sponsored content was a real news story.* More than 30% thought a fake Fox News account was more trustworthy than a real one.* Most Stanford college students could not identify the difference between a mainstream and a fringe source.* *Research by: Stanford s Graduate School of Education

Digital native or digital naïve? Our digital natives may be able to flit between Facebook and Twitter while simultaneously uploading a selfie to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels, they are easily duped. -Stanford research study.

Why does it matter? Uneducated news consumers are more easily manipulated and misled. Reputations, organizations and lives can be destroyed by bad information and in record time. It can affect political processes. (In 3 months before Election Day, 20 top fake news stories generated more FB engagement than top 20 REAL news stories.) Unethical online publishers make money by spreading untrue, libelous and dangerous information.

It can be deadly. Fake news of Pizzagate, a conspiracy that alleged a Washington DC pizza parlor was a front to a child sex trafficking ring, spurred one man to shoot a semiautomatic weapon into one of the restaurants. No one was hurt, but lives could have been lost. The hoax alleged that the child abuse ring was led by Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief, John D. Podesta (above).

It can have long-term repercussions. When citizens can t tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit. Naomi Wolf, author and former Clinton/ Gore political consultant

Dazed and confused When misinformation is marketed as alternative facts, and any news that doesn t jibe with your personal beliefs becomes fake news, no one knows what to believe.

So what can we do? Everyone is a research librarian. Kids must learn to read laterally not vertically.

We also need to raise informed news consumers. Today, everyone is a research librarian. Kids must learn to read laterally not vertically. Know the right questions to ask to deduce whether an article is legit or not. Know which sites to avoid. Know where news sites might fall on the bias spectrum. Have a few good fact-checking sites and resources in your arsenal. When in doubt, don t forward until you ve verified that it s legit.

How to spot fake news? Some general guidelines

A list of the top fake news offenders, courtesy of Snopes.com: National Report World News Daily Report Huzlers Empire News/Empire Herald Stuppid News Examiner Newswatch28 (now Newswatch33) Naha Daily The Stately Harold NewsBuzzDaily Now8News The Reporterz Satira Tribune NC Scooper Associated Media Coverage (now the Boston Tribune) React 365 The Burrard Street Journal The Last Line of Defense (The Resistance)

Types of fake news:

News outlets 17: The good, the bad and the ridiculous. N

Quick hints for fact-checking stories: Politifact. (Truth-o-meter rates political claims.) Factchecker.org, one of the big three, project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania. Viral Spiral section investigates internet rumors. Snopes.com. Media Matters: a watchdog fact checker on conservative news. Reverse-search pictures on Google (right-click image, then choose to search Google for it. If it shows up under many stories, it s likely not on a legit site.)

Read like a fact-checker. Don t read it vertically, like a traditional news story. Read LATERALLY: jump off the original page, open a new tab, Google the name of the organization or its president. Don t rely too much on the About page. The true hoaxers of the world know how to make themselves sound legit. Look past the order of search results. Instead of trusting Google to sort pages by reliability (which reveals a misunderstanding of how Google works), the checkers mined URLs and abstracts for clues. They regularly scrolled down to the bottom of the search results page in their quest to make an informed decision about where to click first.

Widescreen Pictures Pictures can also be presented more dramatically in widescreen.

Daisy chain of reasoning When seeing an image online, we have to ask: Where did this image come from? Was it digitally altered? Is there proof that it was taken where the poster said it was? Was it actually taken in the posted time period? Is it possible that radiation has created similar mutations in other parts of the world? Could something besides radiation cause this deformity?

Can you tell the difference between: A traditional ad? A news story? A native ad?