I had to go through similar lessons here in Colorado. A 30 minute meeting in the library saying "hey, if the new site this story is coming from was created 6 months ago, probably bullshit. And ask yourself why some news from last year is being posted today without context." Little stuff like that. At the time I thought it was useless, but I've seen since that so many people Don't even think of these small precautions.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
294 points (99.3% liked)
World News
39019 readers
4112 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I am a 40 year old nurse and have trouble spotting fake news glad they are teaching it to kids.
My go to rule is never trust anything on social media
Don't trust anything surrounded by advertising.
Nothing’s surrounded by advertisements with a good adblock
The tories are going to be pissed about this one
womp womp Daily Mail in shambles
Great. After that, can we teach the adults, too?
Well, is the education actually sponsored by the right wing? 😬
Personally, this would not help me at all. A 48-point series of questions to consider and it’s not in any way insightful.
I’d just write “Is the headline written to be emotional rather than factual? Does the article actually back up the claim in the headline with facts? Does it cite a source that you can check? Does checking the source tell the same story?”
I've found a layered approach is the best bet. A lot of articles have little to no political subtext. These can be read in a relaxed manner. Those that appear to have some bias can then be subject to a deeper analysis.
It's not perfect, but it limits the cognitive load to something manageable, while allowing you to catch the worst articles easily.
The image posted makes a good 2nd or 3rd pass guide.
And by the time you've been through all those, your grandparents have forwarded it to you on Facebook with a Minion picture on it and "Something needs to be done!!!! 😡😡😡" written under it.
But at least you'll be informed. Sadly the speed of the internet is much faster than the speed of thought.
Thank you. This should be useful, but just in the first line I see three potential fallacies/biases:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono%3F
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
...maybe taken and weighed together their skewed contributions even out.
PS: each is an analytic tool that may apply to your particular problem or not, you don't have to use all of them.
I went to a state school in the UK and remember being taught media literacy, this would've been just over 10 years ago now. I don't know if it was part of the curriculum or just something they decided to add (while it was a state school, it was a very good one in a wealthy area).
We were told to read headlines and guess what the story was about, then we were shown a neutral article that objectively described what happened to highlight how misleading the headlines and pictures were. Among other things, but that sticks out in my mind.
I honestly think it was a fantastic life skill to teach.
Adults should come first, so they then can teach their children.
This stuff tends to work better the other way around, generally. Adults are unreceptive to mass education campaigns, but they are generally willing to hear their kids out.
We should have been doing this from day one.
Calling it now: any challenges to the status quo (aka holding capitalism and the christian white supremacist patriarchal ableist state and establishment responsible for creating the mess we're in for their own benefit) are going to be categorised as “putrid conspiracy theories” right along side and equally to shit like blaming the Jews for controlling and manipulating the economy, asylum seekers for stealing all the jobs and white women, trans people for grooming and turning all the kids, disabled people for draining the tax pot, and communists for anything that's left over.
The education system is far too valuable an asset to the state, they're not going to let such an important tool of indoctrination be subverted to the point where it can be used against them.
So the kids can get a little critical thinking, as a treat, but not enough to give them ideas above their station.
It's a slippery slope.
What happens when, after identifying fake news, they realise that really don't need the this year's new smart phone?
Yup, can't have that!
In fairness, this isn't massively new and I was taught similar back when I was in school. It was genuinely a really good life skill to teach to kids and it was politically neutral.
Does the UK not teach media literacy? I went to public school in Texas and we were given lessons on basic media literacy every few years at a minimum, though I don't think it was in-depth enough.
Media literacy is an extremely broad subject and includes everything from being able to summarise a text, to the discussion of themes within a work, to considering the arguments of a discursive or argumentative work on its merits. This is taught in UK schools.
Fake news, outrage bait, etc. is kind of a different beast, because you have to consider whether the author is writing in good faith as well as knowing a series of rhetorical tricks to look out for. This wasn’t taught to me in school.
We used to have media studies at school. I know my brother took it, but four years later, when I joined the same school, it wasn't available to me.
What did media studies actually involve?
Pretty much just the critical thinking poster somebody already posted here