Special Report: The Changing Face of Literacy
There has never been a generation of young people more immersed in digital media than this one, many of whom learned to use a mobile device before they even started school. This special report examines how literacy instruction is changing in the digital age, from learning to sound out words in elementary school to grappling with “Macbeth” in high school. It finds that, while experts quibble over what it means to be digitally literate, they agree on one thing: even the youngest children should be learning literacy with a mix of print and digital texts. Is the digital revolution transforming literacy instruction in the nation’s schools? Should it?
UM Library Fake News Course
The slides for the LOEX 2018 session entitled Fake News, Lies, and a For-credit Class: Lessons Learned from Teaching a 7-Week Fake News Undergraduate Library Course can be seen on the right. An open Canvas version of the course is available as well. Look for a Canvas version of the course in the Commons if you are a Canvas campus. The assignments in the Canvas Commons course take advantage of the integration of Google Drive and Canvas on our campus.
School Library Journal
Laura Gardner, 2016 SLJ School Librarian of the Year finalist, updates her lesson plans for the era of fake news. Last week, a new study from Stanford University revealed that many students are inept at discerning fact from opinion when reading articles online. The report, combined with the spike in fake and misleading news during the 2016 election, has school librarians, including me, rethinking how we teach evaluation of online sources to our students. How can we educate our students to evaluate the information they find online when so many adults are sharing inaccurate articles on social media? While social media isn’t the only reason for the surge in fake news over the last 10 years, it’s certainly making it harder for information consumers of every age to sort through fact and fiction. As articles about the Stanford study get shared around Facebook, I have two thoughts.
The long, tortured quest to make Google unbiased
Next week, Sundar Pichai will try to reassure Congress that Google’s search engine isn’t rigged. The Google CEO is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, answering questions about “potential bias and the need for greater transparency” in Google’s business practices. It’s Republican lawmakers’ latest move in a series of hearings over Silicon Valley political bias. “Google has created some of the most powerful and impressive technology applications,” wrote House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in the announcement. “Unfortunately, recent reports suggest Google might not be wielding its vast power impartially.
How Much of the Internet Is Fake?
Photo: Artwork by Ayatgali Tuleubek In late November, the Justice Department unsealed indictments against eight people accused of fleecing advertisers of $36 million in two of the largest digital ad-fraud operations ever uncovered. Digital advertisers tend to want two things: people to look at their ads and “premium” websites — i.e., established and legitimate publications — on which to host them.The two schemes at issue in the case, dubbed Methbot and 3ve by the security researchers who found them, faked both. Hucksters infected 1.7 million computers with malware that remotely directed traffic to “spoofed” websites — “empty websites designed for bot traffic” that served up a video ad purchased from one of the internet’s vast programmatic ad-exchanges, but that were designed, according to the indictments, “to fool advertisers into thinking that an impression of their ad was served on a premium publisher site,” like that of Vogue or The Economist. How much of the internet is fake?
5-star phonies: Inside the fake Amazon review complex
“Isn’t this illegal?” I found myself typing one Tuesday night at 1:15 AM. I was chatting with Lien Xi, an Amazon seller from Guangzhou, China, I’d met several minutes before in a private Facebook group. She’d courted me with an offer: If I gave her phone charger a 5-star review, she would refund the purchase via PayPal and send me a $10 “commission.”
'Why I write fake online reviews'
Image copyright Iain Taylor "I've learned never to rely on reviews for anything," says Iain Taylor, from East Sussex. In his spare time and to supplement his income, the 44-year-old says he writes fake reviews online in exchange for money and free products. "I have written reviews from numbing creams to eBooks to downloadable independent films," he says. "I think it's bad - but I think everyone's doing it," says Mr Taylor, describing himself as "cynical". "Since I started doing it I tell my family and friends not to trust reviews.
The Rise of Junk Science
In early 2017, Eduardo Franco, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University, sent an email to his colleagues, warning them of a global “epidemic” of scams by academic journals that was corrupting research and, in effect, endangering the public. As head of the oncology department, where he oversees approximately 230 people, Franco promised to comb through every CV and annual evaluation in the department to flag any colleagues’ resumés that listed journals and conferences that weren’t reputable or, in some cases, even real. He didn’t spell out the consequences, but the implication was clear: the faculty members would be held accountable.
Learning the Techniques of Media Manipulators
One of my favorite definitions of “media literacy” originates from the Canadian province of Ontario. In it, there is this sentence: “Media Literacy is concerned with helping students develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of mass media, the techniques used by them and the impact of these techniques.” In this column, which includes links to many helpful resources, my aim is to call attention to some of those techniques in hopes you will consider helping your students become better critical thinkers about media messages and their makers. I hope you will begin to see this ability as a true survival skill in the social media-saturated world where we now live. Right now, somewhere on the internet, someone is working to create a media message designed to fool media illiterate people.
OMICS, Publisher of Fake Journals, Makes Cosmetic Changes to Evade Detection
New Delhi: A glut of fake scientific journals, which publish dubious research for money, has been posing many challenges for the world’s research community of late. Despite many warnings issued by the publishers of legitimate journals to stay away from their fake/duplicate counterparts, many gullible researchers fall for them as these journals resemble the real things in look and feel. A new study suggests fake journals could also be evolving to bypass the standard ways to filter them out. Usually a publication that proactively seeks research papers from scientists and publishes low-quality journals without a reliable editorial board and peer-review system is dubbed ‘predatory’. Predatory publishers often engage in forgery, plagiarism and incorrect indexing practices. They also falsify editorial boards and lure researchers by claiming to offer better services and assured publication.
Getting Beyond the CRAAP Test: A Conversation with Mike Caulfield
I have been a fan of Mike Caulfield's work in developing new tools for helping students learn the skills of digital literacy and fact checking for quite some time. I even put an exercise in The Writer's Practice built on Caulfield's "four moves." When I found out he has a new project that is freely available to instructors and highly adaptable to any course, I wanted to do what I can to get the word out. We talked about both the new project in specific and his bigger project in general. - JW
How Google Creates Alternative Reality
COVFEFE – Google deleted this word from its Arabic-English dictionary after President Trump used it in his tweet on May 31, 2017. The original translation of this word (more accurately rendered in English as “cov fe’fe”) was “I will stand up“. Trump used it in a tweet “Despite constant negative press covfefe“, when he came back from Saudi Arabia. Few hours later, he tweeted “Who can figure out the true meaning of “covfefe” ??? Enjoy!”
Fact Finder: Your Foolproof Guide to Media Literacy
Are your students savvy searchers? Can they spot the difference between a straight news article and an opinion piece? Do they recognize bias in their sources … or in themselves? Tackle these challenges and more using Fact Finder’s 11 flexible, multimedia lesson plans.
