Reflections on Fake News Webinar

As many have pointed out, it's unfortunate that the term "fake news" has entered the daily lexicon only following the 2016 US presidential election because fake news isn't new and is only a small piece of the information literacy equation. Nonetheless it presents an opportune moment for information professionals to claim a leadership role in fighting an issue that is of mainstream attention. For these reasons I was happy to participate in a webinar through ALA yesterday with some colleagues. It was called Fake News, Real Concerns: Developing Information-Literate Students Workshop and was presented by Donald A. Barclay, who wrote a popular article on the topic earlier this year.

Barclay proposed thinking about the 1964 release of the Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health within the context of our current information landscape: how might have social media, the internet, memes, and predatory journals diffused the credibility of the report and waylaid a major public health improvement effort?

This ended up being a great context through which to examine the fake news issue of the current year, because we are so used to living with social media and living in an information glut that it is sometimes hard to see the forest for the trees. It is important to inspect all contemporary driving forces and economic motivators of media influence on public opinion when evaluating information.

I had some very concrete takeaways from this webinar, which I live-tweeted.

"Fake news" is:
lying
mercenary (sell papers, ad revenue)
propaganda
clickbait (can be mercenary or propaganda)
humor
not new!#LibFNRC

— ₭elci M. ₭elci (@bibliobebe) July 27, 2017

What can we do?
address emotional component
teach the tricks
use the framework
partner with allies #fightfakenews #LibFNRC

— ₭elci M. ₭elci (@bibliobebe) July 27, 2017

When Barclay says "teach the tricks," he means these:

And when he says use the ACRL Framework, he points out that "credibility and applicability of most information is not an either/or proposition." He advises to rate the level of the stakes in order to gauge risk corresponding to the amount of time it takes to ascertain the "truth" of a claim.

Barclay also suggested using the concept of the Dunning-Kruger effect as a model for an in-class activity to expose students to their own overestimation of their ability to evaluate information. To engage students during a library instruction session, show students something that most would think is credible (for example martinlutherking.org), poll them, and then deconstruct why it is not credible according to the "tricks" above and the framework. It will make them realize how scrutinizing they need to be because their gullibility is exposed. I am looking forward to using this in some of the instruction sessions I will co-teach this fall!