This presentation is part of a panel held at the Albany Public Library in Albany, New York on Sunday November 4, 2018. It explore the emergence of false and misleading information in a post-truth world and how metaliteracy is a teaching and learning solution to empower individuals to be informed consumers and creative producers of information in a digital world.

1. 1
Tom Mackey, Ph.D.
Professor
SUNY Empire State College
Albany Public Library
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Fake News, Real Teens:
Problems and
Possibilities

2. “Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018”
• “YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the
most popular online platforms among teens.”
• “Fully 95% of teens have access to a
smartphone, and 45% say they are online
'almost constantly’”
2http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/
(Anderson and Jiang, 2018)

3. WHAT IS POST-TRUTH?
3

4. 2016 Word of the Year
According to the Oxford Dictionaries:
4
post-truth – an adjective defined as
‘relating to or denoting circumstances in
which objective facts are less influential
in shaping public opinion than appeals
to emotion and personal belief’.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth

5. What is Confirmation Bias?
“seeking out and interpreting data in a way that
strengthens our preestablished opinions”
(Sharot, 2017, p. 22).
“Established beliefs can be extremely resistant
to change, even when scientific evidence is
provided to undermine those beliefs” (Sharot,
2017, p. 15).
5
Sharot, Tali. 2017. The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power
to Change Others. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

6. “In a very fundamental way we, as a free people,
have freely decided that we want to live in some
post-truth world” (Tesich, 1992, p. 13).
6
Tesich, Steve. 1992. The Watergate Syndrome: A Government of Lies.
The Nation. (January). 12-14.

7. “We are post-truth because we already have
and possess our truths” (Kirkpatrick, 2017, p. 331).
7
Kirkpatrick, Andrew. 2017. Understanding in a Post-truth World: Comprehension
and Co-Naissance as Emphatic Antidotes to Post-Truth Politics. Cosmos and
History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy. 312-335.

8. What if someone believes that
the Earth flat?
8

9. 9
Earthrise, 1968 https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html

10. 10
(1564-1642)

11. 11

12. WHAT IS FAKE NEWS?
12

13. Remember when fake news was satire?
13NBC Copyright: 2017 NBCUniversal Media, LLC

14. John Seigenthaler Wikipedia Hoax (2005)
14https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Seigenthaler_biography_incident

15. 2017 Word of the Year
According to the Collins English Dictionary:
15
Fake news – noun
false, often sensational, information
disseminated under the guise of news
reporting.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fake-news

16. “Pizzagate” Fake News Story
• Weeks leading up to
2016 Presidential
Election
• Online conspiracy
theory
• Misinformation based
on hacked emails
• Owner contacted FBI
but could not stop
NYTimes Nov. 21. 2016
16
By Farragutful [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria, Washington, D.C.
NYTimes Dec. 5, 2016

17. “Pizzagate” Fake News Story
17
NYTimes Dec. 5, 2016

18. Fake News in 2016
• “fake news website production and consumption
was overwhelmingly pro-Trump in its orientation”
(Guess, Nyhan, and Reifler, 2018, p. 10-11)
• “Facebook played an important role in directing
people to fake news websites” (Guess, Nyhan,
and Reifler, 2018, p. 11)
• “fact-checking failed to effectively counter fake
news” (Guess, Nyhan, and Reifler, 2018, p. 11)
18
Guess, Andrew, Brendan Nyhan, and Jason Reifler. 2018. Selective Exposure to
Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S.
presidential campaign. https://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/fake-news-2016.pdf

19. Photograph from 2012 falsely linked to
Central American immigrants in 2018
19Screen-capture from Medium author Trevor Hugh Davis

20. Photograph from 2012 falsely linked to
Central American immigrants in 2018
20Screen-capture from Medium author Trevor Hugh Davis

21. 21
“Computer Scientists Demonstrate The Potential
For Faking Video”
Aarti Shahani, Tech Reporter, NPR Business Desk
July 14, 2017, 4:57 AM ET
“Synthesizing Obama: Learning Lip Sync from Audio” SIGGRAPH 2017
Supasorn Suwajanakorn, Steven M. Seitz, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman

22. WHAT IS METALITERACY?
22

23. • Advances critical thinking and collaboration
• Supports effective participation in social media and
online communities
• Encourages producing and sharing knowledge in
collaborative with others
23
Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson “Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy.”
College & Research Libraries. January 2011 72:62-78. http://crl.acrl.org/content/72/1/62.full.pdf

24. 24
METALITERACY

25. Four parts of Metaliteracy
Metacognitive
or reflective
Cognitive
or thinking
Affective or
feeling
Behavioral
or doing
Mackey and Jacobson (2014) Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners

26. Metaliterate Learner Roles
Mackey and Jacobson (2014) Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners

27. METALITERACY GOALS AND
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
27

28. 28
Actively evaluate content while also
evaluating one’s own biases
Image Bias by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 ImageCreator

29. 29
Engage with all intellectual property
ethically and responsibly

30. Protect personal privacy and actively
secure your online information
30https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ap_facebook_dislike.jpg
87 Million Users Exposed to Cambridge Analytica

31. 31
Produce and share information in collaborative
and participatory environments
http://www.youthfx.org/

32. Recognize that learners are also teachers
and teach what you know or learn
32https://www.instagram.com/p/BpE6t-Ol5pI/

33. “Metaliterate learners are
optimistic that through
reflective and empowered
participation, and the
strength of connected
communities, we will
purposefully reinvent a
truthful world.” (Mackey,
p. 28, 2019)
33Edited by Mackey & Jacobson, 2019

34. 34
Tom Mackey, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Arts and Media
SUNY Empire State College
Tom.Mackey@esc.edu
Follow Metaliteracy.org