Presented in March 2018 at to Toms River Schools high school and intermediate school teachers.

1. Fake News
March 7th, 2018
Presented by Karla Ivarson, Mariner Media Specialist
Toms River High School North
New Jersey

2. Fake news stories
are not new!

3. Great Moon Hoax, 1835, New York Sun
http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax

4. https://www.livescience.com/56037-feejee-
mermaid.html
https://www.amherst.edu/news/news_releases/201
7/4-2017/the-mead-s-mermaid
1842, P.T. Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid

5. http://www.feedbooks.com/bo
ok/35/the-war-of-the-worlds
1938: a fictional radio show
is mistaken for reality.
https://skepticalteacher.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/a-historical-halloween-
skepticism-lesson-the-1938-war-of-the-worlds-broadcast-by-orson-welles/

6. 1990s:
Urban
Legends
are
forwarded
waaaaaay
too many
times via
email.

7. Why do we seem to
be encountering so
many more fake
news stories today?

8. https://www.blueswitch.com/dos-
and-donts-of-social-media-
marketing/

9. Let’s get our
terms straight.
Clickbait
Satire
Misleading or out of
context information
Conspiracy Theories
Biased reporting
Google dropping the ball

10. Clickbait

11. Satire
https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2014/09/22/dont-microwave-your-iphone/

13. Misleading
or out of
context
information
Conspiracy
Theory

14. Biased
reporting

16. Google
dropping
the ball

18. What strategies are useful?

19. http://yournewswire.com/mutant-flowers-spotted-at-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-site/
Mutant
Flowers
Spotted At
Fukushima
Nuclear
Disaster Site

20. Reverse Google Image Search

21. Fakes you can make:
www.react365.com/

22. What do we do
about the
inherent
problems in
Google’s
algorithm?

23. How does all of this impact
our work as educators?

24. 70%
of our
Freshmen
answered
incorrectly.
From the media center orientation Kahoot:

25. Our Freshmen are in good company
2016 Stanford University study of over 7,800 students
● Some 82% of middle-schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled
“sponsored content” and a real news story on a website.
● The majority of college students couldn’t identify political bias in a Tweet
sent by an activist group.
● “Bleak”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/most-students-dont-know-when-news-is-fake-stanford-study-finds-1479752576
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818/study-finds-students-have-dismaying-inability-to-tell-fake-
news-from-real

27. How can we ameliorate the
deluge of misinformation?

28. Before you ask
your students to
find information,
have you
determined that
they can:
identify the credentials of
an article’s author?
identify bias in articles?
identify sponsored
content?
know how to verify
information?

29. Here’s an easy checklist
for students to use.
It’s one of many:
http://researchguides.library.vanderbilt
.edu/c.php?g=68930&p=445413
http://libguides.southmountaincc.edu/
CRAPtest
https://www.csuchico.edu/lins/hando
uts/eval_websites.pdf
https://libraryeuroparl.files.wordpress.
com/2017/03/fake-
spotting_gw.jpg?w=750&h=746

30. http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/the-chart-version-3-0-what-exactly-are-we-reading/
Vanessa Otero’s
chart can help
students
determine the
bias of news
sources.
(Responses on her
blog discuss the
bias in this chart.)

31. We also need to teach our students to
listen to perspectives which differ
from theirs and respond thoughtfully.
Dialog!
Socratic circles!

32. How can we figure out if
someone posting on
Social Media
is a real person?

33. Bots post 50-100 times an
hour.

34. ):
Good grief.
Fortunately, https://botcheck.me/ won’t update your profile or post Tweets for you.
Bot-o-meter runs
Twitter accounts
through an algorithm.

35. How can we be good
Digital Citizens?
is it baiting you into anger?
is it obfuscating an issue?
is it shutting down dialog?
is it overly sentimental
(and perhaps misattributed?)
is it just plain ridiculous?
Before you share something, ask:

36. Fact check it:
AllSides.com
FactCheck.org
Fair.org
Media Bias Fact Check
PolitiFact.com
Snopes.com
http://guides.wpunj.edu/c.php?g=615053&p=4304649

37. Further reading:
William Paterson’s comprehensive library
guide of articles, lessons and other resources:
http://guides.wpunj.edu/fakenews

38. Are you ready to sort fact
from fiction?
http://factitious.augamestudio.com/#/
(The game isn’t timed, so you can look up
and assess the sources.)

40. https://librarye
uroparl.files.w
ordpress.com/
2017/03/fake-
spotting_gw.jp
g?w=750&h=7
46