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Ready to see how well you spot fake news?

Go to: http://factitious.augamestudio.com

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Breaking free of curricular confines: Seeking new opportunities to teach critical media literacy in the era of “fake news”

Alex Pfundt, Bryn Mawr College

Abby Morris, Texas Woman’s University

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What’s We’ll Cover Today

Theoretical framing
Media literacy needs
Our personal paths with media literacy

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Theoretical Framing

Teacher Autonomy and Job Satisfaction

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Image credit: Grete Stern, Dreams

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Image credit: Muhammad M Rahman [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Self-determination theory concerns people's inherent growth tendencies and innate psychological needs.

Emerged from research on intrinsic motivation: doing something for its own sake because it’s interesting and satisfying

Autonomy (and self-perceived competence) are important for motivation and psychological well-being (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Gagne & Deci, 2005)
By applying this theory to our professional lives, we would assume that perceived autonomy predicts engagement and job satisfaction

Education literature suggests this is true (Avanzi, Miglioretti, Velasco, Balducci, Vecchio, Fraccaroli, et al., 2013; Koustelios, Karabatzaki, & Kousteliou, 2004; Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2009, 2010).

Furthermore, perceived autonomy is negatively associated with burnout and emotional exhaustion (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2009, 2010).

Teacher autonomy is the freedom to choose goals, teaching methods, and educational strategies that align with one’s personal educational beliefs and values (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2014).

Media literacy instruction has been just that for us, and therefore has been rewarding and energizing for us as professionals

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Media Literacy Needs

Where Fake News and Critical Thinking Converge

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Fake News in the Headlines

Fake news has continued to dominate the headlines since the 2016 election
Since 2016, President Trump has tweeted about fake news 432 times

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1115596294016335872

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https://www.statista.com/study/40780/fake-news-in-the-us-statista-dossier/

Statista has built a dossier of fake news statistics in the past few years. Their statistics look at media use, media credibility, prevalence of fake news, and the impact of fake news. The show an interesting set of statics they offer looking at fake news by age, making it easier to see where our students might fall. While you can tell from the survey that the ages had very similar views of fake news dissemination, for respondents in the 18-34 age range, 80% felt traditional news sources reported fare news stories at least occasionally or regularly. In that group, 2% were unsure if news sources were reporting fake news.

The questions asked was: Do you think some traditional major news sources like TV and newspapers ever report fake news stories, or not? [If YES: Do they do this regularly or just occasionally?]

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https://www.statista.com/study/40780/fake-news-in-the-us-statista-dossier/

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“We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information … Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.”

Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science,359(6380), 1146-1151. doi:10.1126/science.aap9559

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Want to you where you rank?

https://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/news-statements-quiz/

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/23/younger-americans-are-better-than-older-americans-at-telling-factual-news-statements-from-opinions/

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ACRL Framework

Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
Information Has Value

Here’s How Fake News Works (and How the Internet Can Stop It) Wired.com

For academic librarians, the ACRL Framework give us a good starting point for media literacy. The first frame, “Authority is constructed and contextual” gives us a good start for media literacy. The framework discusses that experts in the frame will use skepticism when assessing credibility of sources and novices will use basic skills and indicators to determine credibility.

Another frame that fits well with media literacy instruction is “Information has value.” This frame works well with the idea that fake news is created and spread to create revenue via ads (a very basic definition of value), but also that users need to look at their own personal biases when assessing the credibility of resources. This is an important element of a fake news strategy both Alex and I really enjoy “4 Moves and a Habit.” (which Alex will go into further)

4 Moves and a Habit- where the habit element asks the user to have a skeptical stance, and be aware of the biases you are bringing to the table

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Media Literacy in the First Year Experience

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Mike Caulfield

https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/

Check for previous work
Go upstream
Read laterally
Circle back
Check your emotions

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Image credit: quimono - https://medium.com/an-idea-for-you/want-to-make-money-from-your-expertise-start-here-2bc1b2f3d9f

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Fake News & Community Outreach

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I started in 2017 with an idea to focus my media literacy instruction in workshops and one-shot in-class instruction. I started with 2 workshops which had a total of 2 attendees (in addition to a few library staff members). I felt I had done a decent job promoting the workshops, and the students who attended seemed to enjoy them, but didn’t really have any luck.

After the workshops, word of mouth slowly started to spread. I taught a one-shot to a government class, which went well, but it was still not very popular. Eventually I was contacted by one of our SLIS professors who asked if I could teach a session for a variety of future librarians on how they could incorporate media literacy into their programs. It was an online webinar (our program is online) and there were about 30 students in attendance. It went really well, I received great feedback, and I also created a LibGuide to add to some of the information I shared.

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After the online webinar, my media literacy instruction moved to community outreach. One of the attendees of the webinar mentioned my session to the head of the social studies program at our local school district. She contacted me and asked if I could do two half-day trainings for middle school and high school social studies teachers.

I had to fill over two hours with the teachers, and covered information on different types of fake news - photoshopped pictures, propaganda, satire, and stories created for revenue. The session also included information on historical fake news, and allowed teachers time to create and share lesson plans.

This session led to a presentation at the Texas Social Studies Conference. I was able to teach a thankfully shorted session on fake news. The session was standing room only, and a great experience sharing was social studies teachers could incorporate media literacy and critical thinking into their instruction. I included many examples of fake news and how to incorporate the instruction with state curriculum.

In these more public/community sessions, I faced a much more diverse audience and received some push-back. I generally shared a list of easy sources of fake news with the teachers and librarians. Before each session, I would go through me lists and make sure the sites were up and running, and still sharing the same types of stories. Over the years the sites have thankfully decreased in number. In these sessions, I would generally hear some grumbling when I would include more popular sites like “InfoWars” on the list. While Alex Jones has faced a lot of public and legal backlash of late, at the time I was always a little hesitant of putting something on a list that someone in the room might use for news. There were always easy examples of clear fake news that Alex Jones had promoted, and I made sure to be ready with them when there was occasional push back.

In these sessions I could definitely tell that social studies teachers were facing a challenging road of students who loved to share clearly false stories online and wanting to help limit this, but also the challenges of students who were being encouraged to listen to and believe fake news by the parents, family members, and others. The line they had to tread was clearly hard and they were often concerned with backlash they could face from parents and school administrators.

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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1408775412587899&set=gm.1954929941295258

https://twitter.com/ArtAcevedo/status/1054517258712694785/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1054517258712694785&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.snopes.com%2Ffact-check%2Ftrump-rally-crowd-66000%2F

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https://www.theonion.com/study-finds-placing-one-foot-forward-then-the-other-r-1829908283

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http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/husband-and-wife-discover-they-are-biological-twins-after-ivf-clinic-performs-routine-dna-test-a3515666.html

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Lastly, I was lucky enough to be asked by our Enactus Club, a business organization at our campus, to work with high school girls at our annual girl scout day on campus. This is a day where hundreds of local girl scouts spend the day on campus and earn badges with the help of professionals and subject experts. I’ve been able to help high schoolers earn their “truth seeker badge” in 2018 and 2019. To earn the badge, we go through a series of activities over a few hours. We do activities that include, analyzing the same news story through different sources, looking at requirements in advertising, looking at how social media regulates ad content, writing editorials, looking at urban legends, and analyzing online reviews. I find the day to be a fun experience personally, and it leads to really interesting conversations and critical thinking with thoughtful young women and some of our student volunteers.

I also recently presented about incorporating media literacy in school librarian instruction in a local school librarian conference. In my presentation I talked about types of fake news, fake news in politics, strategies for helping students identify fake news like the 4 Moves and a Habit method, and ideas for media literacy lessons.

While my path with fake news and media literacy hasn’t been what I expected, I have enjoyed embracing the subject expert and autonomy of teaching media literacy to other instructors, be they teachers or other librarians. I have seen people from a huge variety of backgrounds and interests, all concerned about fake news and what they can do. I have talked to students about challenging issues of social justice when trying to decide if a news story was true. I believe that embracing media literacy in instruction gives all of us an amazing opportunity to look at an issue that is causing divisiveness throughout our world and allows us to encourage students and users to engage in critical thinking to be more thoughtful media consumers and

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More info?

Alex Pfundt

apfundt@brynmawr.edu

Bryn Mawr College

Abby Morris

amorris8@twu.edu

Texas Woman’s University

Copies of our slides and handouts?

http://bit.ly/2Dbf6Nt

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References

Avanzi, L., Miglioretti, M., Velasco, V., Balducci, C., Vecchio, L., Fraccaroli, F., & Skaalvik, E. M. (2013). Cross-validation of the norwegian teacher’s self-efficacy scale (NTSES). Teaching and Teacher Education, 31, 69–78.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 331–362. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.322

Kakutani, M. (2018). The death of truth: Notes on falsehood in the age of Trump. New York: Tim Duggan Books.

Koustelios, A. D., Karabatzaki, D., & Kousteliou, I. (2004). Autonomy and job satisfaction for a sample of Greek teachers. Psychological Reports, 95(3), 883–886.

Shaulova, E., & Biagi, L. (n.d.). Fake news in the U.S. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/study/40780/fake-news-in-the-us-statista-dossier/

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References

Sheesley, D. F. (2001). Burnout and the academic teaching librarian: an examination of the problem and suggested solutions. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 27(6), 447–451. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0099-1333(01)00264-6

Skaalvik, E. M., & Skaalvik, S. (2009). Does school context matter? Relations with teacher burnout and job satisfaction. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(3), 518–524.

Skaalvik, E. M., & Skaalvik, S. (2010). Teacher self-efficacy and teacher burnout: A study of relations. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(4), 1059–1069.

Skaalvik, E. M., & Skaalvik, S. (2014). Teacher self-efficacy and perceived autonomy: Relations with teacher engagement, job satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion. Psychological Reports, 114(1), 68–77. https://doi.org/10.2466/14.02.PR0.114k14w0

Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science,359(6380), 1146-1151. doi:10.1126/science.aap9559