News Literacy Week 2 PDF

Summary

This document is an introduction to news literacy, discussing the need for it, what fake news is, and how it operates within the ecosystem of misinformation. It also explores why people spread fake news, and the challenges of information literacy in the digital age. The document includes considerations for the Chinese context and examples of fake news.

Full Transcript

News Literacy Introduction: News, Fake News, and News Literacy | Week 2 Harry Febrian, Ph.D Outline: The need for news literacy What is fake news? Fake news within the ecosystem of mis/ disinformation Why people spread fake news? News literacy is… …the ability to determine the credibility...

News Literacy Introduction: News, Fake News, and News Literacy | Week 2 Harry Febrian, Ph.D Outline: The need for news literacy What is fake news? Fake news within the ecosystem of mis/ disinformation Why people spread fake news? News literacy is… …the ability to determine the credibility of news and other information using the standards of quality journalism. It helps foster healthy scepticism while avoiding cynical distrust of all news and information News literacy is foundational to a bigger media literacy. News literacy is (2)… The goal of news literacy is, broadly put, to teach people how to consume news critically so they know when information is trustworthy–and when it isn’t The Digital Age poses four information literacy challenges for civil society The overwhelming amount of information that oods over us each day makes it di cult to sort out reliable from fabricated information New technologies to create and widely share information make it possible to spread misinformation that looks like it’s from an authoritative source. ffi fl The Digital Age poses four information literacy challenges for civil society The con ict between speed and accuracy has escalated. We all want information as quickly as possible, but accelerating the distribution of information in the Digital Era has also increased the chances that the information will be wrong. The Internet and Social Media make it much easier to select only the information that supports our preexisting beliefs, reinforcing rather than challenging them fl The Need for Information/ Media/News Literacy …Then there is the World Wide Web, which has been estimated to have almost two billion websites (Internet Live Stats, 2018) but is so huge that no one knows how big it really is. Each of these websites has the potential to deliver an unlimited amount of information. For example, a video platform such as YouTube has more than ve billion videos available for viewing (YouTube, 2018), and users are uploading more than 500 new hours of video every minute of every day (Clement, 2019). fi Before we continue, watch this short videos and let me know what do you think of it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDQPPBRW2ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqpzk-qGxMU “Not you. Your [news] organization is terrible,” shouted president-elect Donald Trump at White House reporter Jim Acosta of CNN during a press conference, to which Acosta replied, “Since you’re attacking us, can you give us a question? Mr. President-elect, since you’re attacking our news organization, can you give us a chance?” Trump shot back, “I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news” Ever since that January 2017 morning, fake news has become an omnipresent idiom in American discourse. In fact, during his first year in office, Trump used the phrase over four hundred times. 2 The phrase became a cultural phenomenon. Now, consider another example of what happened in the Chinese context https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONm2u1gAL0Y the central factor enabling the legitimization of fake news: news users cannot distinguish between fake news and journalism. (Higdon, 2020). outside of news, could we discern quality content vs junk/fake content that we consume every day through digital media? It is impossible to develop e ective news literacy pedagogy, critical or acritical, that mitigates the in uence of fake news without a comprehensive understanding of fake news ff fl What is Fake News? (1) a 2018 study of fake news by Edson C. Tandoc Jr., Zheng Wei Lim, and Richard Ling concludes that “there is no agreed upon de nition of the term ‘fake news.’ University of Michigan: “fake news” as those news stories that are false: the story itself is fabricated, with no veri able facts, sources or quotes fi fi What is Fake News? (2) The universe of “fake news” is much larger than simply false news stories. Some stories may have a nugget of truth, but lack any contextualizing details. They may not include any veri able facts or sources. Some stories may include basic veri able facts, but are written using language that is deliberately in ammatory, leaves out pertinent details or only presents one viewpoint. "Fake news" exists within a larger ecosystem of mis- and disinformation. fl fi fi What is Fake News? (3) Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is mistakenly or inadvertently created or spread; the intent is not to deceive. Disinformation is false information that is deliberately created and spread "in order to in uence public opinion or obscure the truth” fl What is Fake News? (4) Fake news is not a new phenomena. See one example on the “fake news” article in the tabloid the Sun in 1835. Why people spread fake news? Partisan actors want to in uence voters and policy makers for political gain, or to in uence public discourse More clicks means more money. Some news stories are created by people wanting to generate clicks for nancial gain, regardless of the content (remember the case of Thurman Maoyibei). fl fl fi That’s why we need news literacy Short video: what is a quality journalism? Quality news? Quality content? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs6FliSsoW4

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