![]() We are letting our digital platforms, from our phones to our computers and social media, rule us. The real problem is that we haven’t developed the skills to absorb, assess, and sort the unprecedented amounts of information coming from new technologies. As Jackie Mansky writes in Smithsonian, “ been part of the conversation as far back as the birth of the free press.” Still, says Mendoza, “we are at a unique moment because when something was on print, it could only spread so far and wide … And now, digitally, information can spread exponentially and it’s really easy to spread something that’s not true.” In 1672, King Charles II of England issued a “Proclamation To Restrain the Spreading of False News.” And during World War II, Nazi-run broadcasters spread fake news about the war to occupied people across Europe. What’s more, “fake news is nothing new,” says Kelly Mendoza, senior director for education programs at Common Sense Education, an educator-focused branch of the digital nonprofit Common Sense Media. As the authors of a large MIT study wrote in 2018, fake news does so well online “because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.” In other words, people seem to be irresistibly drawn to fake news. Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic that “Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories” because humans are drawn to those stories’ sense of novelty and the strong emotions they elicit, from fear to disgust and surprise. As the Stanford researchers wrote in their report, “democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish.” As the past few years have shown, biased reporting and outright fake news have the potential to impact elections and referendums or lead to tragic, real-life consequences, as with the online spread of the #Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which led to a shooting at a DC pizzeria by a man who was convinced that Hillary Clinton ran a child-trafficking ring there. The Stanford study confirms what many teachers know to be true: Today’s students are not prepared to deal with the flood of information coming at them from their various digital devices. As the team later wrote in their report, “many assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally savvy about what they find there. ![]() ![]() After an initial pilot round, the researchers realized that most students lacked the basic ability to recognize credible information or partisan junk online, or to tell sponsored content apart from real articles. In their own words, the researchers initially found themselves “rejecting ideas for tasks because we thought they would be too easy”-in other words, that students would find it obvious whether or not information was reliable. The researchers say they collected 7,804 student responses. To do this, they designed 56 different assessments for students in middle schools, high schools, and colleges across 12 states. ![]() The experiment was part of a larger study conducted by researchers from Stanford University’s History Education Group (HEG), who set out to measure what they called “civic online reasoning”-that is, young people’s ability to judge the credibility of the information they find online.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |