Fake News and Informed Citizens: Strategies for Students and Teachers

The tools we’ve invented are handling us, not the other way around.--Sam Wineberg

https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/chapter/four-strategies/

• Check for previous work: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research.
• Go upstream to the source: Go “upstream” to the source of the claim. Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information.
• Read laterally: Read laterally.[1] Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network.
• Circle back: If you get lost, or hit dead ends, or find yourself going down an increasingly confusing rabbit hole, back up and start over knowing what you know now. You’re likely to take a more informed path with different search terms and better decisions.

Civic Online Reasoning: https://sheg.stanford.edu/civic-online-reasoning

• Who is behind the evidence?
• What is the evidence?
• What do other sources say?

Ten Questions for Fake News Detection

How to Teach your Students about Fake News