Misinformation training aka Media Literacy

 

I caught this news item as I was leaving the house one Sunday morning.  I have to say I was immediately drawn in.  I was drawn in not by the fourth grader wearing the Ironman world championship hoodie but by the idea of educating elementary students on how to recognize misinformation.  My immediate reaction was that "isn't what school is supposed to be about?"  School should foster critical thinking, curiosity and not taking everything at face value.  Then I corrected myself these attributes are associated with education not school.  The difference between education and school is a topic best left for later.

Me second reaction was highlighted in the video.  I wish everyone had this type of training.  I cannot count the number of times something an acquaintance has posted on social media has led to an eye roll.  I am quite tolerant of friends and acquaintances and what they post.  I value my friendships too much to get into a pissing match over some comment posted on a random social media site.  What shocks me is media outlets posting articles with blatantly incorrect information.  This article had the headline "The five deadliest hurricanes in US history".  The headline is quite clear, "...five deadliest hurricanes..." .  I would expect to see a list of hurricanes that caused the most fatalities.  This list should be undisputable.  If the headline had said "costliest" there could be some debate revolving around inflation and present values.  If the headline had read "strongest hurricanes" there could be a debate about the accuracy of details and technology to record a hurricanes strength.  This headline read as the "deadliest" .  The article should then list the hurricanes based on the number of people who lost their lives due to the hurricane.  The article doesn't even come close to listing the 5 deadliest hurricanes.  Out of the 5 listed in the article only one (Katrina) is truly in the top 5.  I cannot understand how a news organization can get this so wrong!  The article was created by the Daily Mail and published on the MSN news site.  How can these organizations get something this easily verified so wrong?  This USA Today article specifies a time frame (1950 to present).  It is much more accurate than the daily mail article, only 2 of the five match (Camille and Katrina).  All the articles show the number of deaths for each of the hurricanes and the figures are consistent.  For example the USA Today article and the Daily Mail article report hurricane Andrew causing 65 deaths (Andrew occurred in 1992).  The USA today article lists it as the 14th most deadly hurricane where as the Daily Mail lists it in the top 5.

If news organization cannot get simple ideas straight how can I expect regular people to get them straight.  Daily Mail get your facts straight!

Given the misinformation of the Daily Mail article I cannot be a big enough supported of the Finish approach to media literacy.  I even scanned the book shown in the videos.  The book is titled The ABC's of Media Literacy.  I had a scan through it and noting in it is all that earth shattering.  In the book each letter of the alphabet is associated with a term.  Each term has about I one or two page definition (I was reading a pdf not an actual text book).  For example "A" was for algorithm and "B" was for Bot.  Other terms were more standard, such as "J" is for Journalism and "E" is for ethics.  As I said not all that revealing.  Scanning the book and reviewing the videos I have come to the conclusion that this is a modern presentation of critical thinking.

Critical think can be described in many ways, this is not a bad definition:

Critical thinking is a kind of thinking in which you question, analyze, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement about what you read, hear, say, or write.

The video shows students questioning the validity of information based on logic, the source of the information and plain common sense.  As the video explains the students are being taught to recognize fake news but they also have to back up their reasons.  One thing I wish the video showed would be an example of real news and how the student concluded it was not fake.  One of the key take aways for me was the different environments between Finland and the US.  The primary motivation for Finland seemed to be protection from the neighboring Russian state.  As the video states much of Finland's misinformation appears to be generated by Russia (according to the video).  It is implied in the video that Russia seeks to destabilize Finland's democracy with misinformation.

In the US we also are subject to misinformation emanating from Russia (possibly Iran as well).  However we seem to be quite adept at producing it ourselves.  Instead of spotting misinformation and subsequently discounting it we actively search for any hint of it and then use it as a club to beat our political opponents.  Watch any press conference and count the number of times the term misinformation is used by both the press and the politicians. 

Unfortunately until our elementary students get this type of training I think the battering ram of misinformation will be around for a while.