Critical Thinking: News and Media Literacy

This is a 4 1/2 minute audio broadcast of an interview about fake news. The guest and host discuss how they define "fake news" and why we should pay attention.

This article from December 2017 describes some new technology that manipulates audio and video and how this may be used to spread misinformation. The article also provides some essential questions that educators can use with students as they address media and news literacy.

Conspiracy theories and speculation about coronavirus have flooded social media. But who starts these rumours? And who spreads them? Learn from a disinformation reporter with the BBC.

This 2018 article addresses how youth are navigating modern misinformation and propaganda online. The article provides a background to "fake news" and tips for thinking critically about media.

There are three levels of quizzes by age: under 11, 11-13, and 14+. Students can test their ability to indentify fake online information.

The Columbia Journalism Review has published a guide on what legitimate news looks like – and what fake news doesn’t. The article shares some of the key standards of journalistic quality.

This article shares the story of a teacher who taught his students how to think critically about news. The author provides some tips you can use with your students.

This 2-minute video has tips for students that are reading information or doing research online.

This (American) research looked at how kids get their news, how much they trust different news sources, whether they can spot "fake news," and more. The survey was conducted in January 2017 and included 853 children age 10–18.

This classroom resource, based on the book Ready Player One and created by an educator, has discussion ideas, videos and interviews. The resource promotes critical literacy and the importance of understanding how ideas are constructed and shared.

The speed with which information spreads today has created the ideal conditions for something called circular reporting. Noah Tavlin sheds light on this phenomenon.

Statistics can be very persuasive in an argument. But any set of statistics might have something lurking inside it that can turn the results completely upside down.

With the advent of the Internet and social media, news is distributed instantaneously by an unprecedented number of different media outlets. Damon Brown gives the inside scoop on how the opinions and facts (and non-facts) make their way into the news and how the smart reader can tell them apart.

n 1901, David Hänig published research that led to what we know today as the taste map: an illustration that divides the tongue into four separate areas. It has since been published in textbooks and newspapers. There is just one problem: the map is wrong. So how do misconceptions like this spread, and what makes a fake fact so easy to believe?