Fake News and Media Literacy

Stanford History Education Group

November 22, 2016

This Stanford study developed a bank of assessments to measure civic online reasoning. This document synthesizes their findings.

By Michael Robb

March 7,2017

Common Sense Media's research explores kids' relationship to the news -- and how adults can help kids thrive as 21st-century citizens.

By Seth Flaxman, Sharad Goel, and Justin M. Rao

Public Opinion Quarterly

March 22, 2016

Some scholars argue that technological changes in the way people consume news increase exposure to diverse perspectives, while others worry that they increase ideological segregation. This study addresses that issue.

by Steve Inskeep, NPR,

December 11, 2016

This article discusses news falsehoods and their consequences. It also includes criteria for judging news, and links to related websites.

by Matthew Green, PBS

December 6, 2016

The honest truth about fake news and now not to fall for it. This article includes a lesson plan and links to other websites about news media literacy.

by David Buckingham

January 12, 2017

This blog article emphasizes the need to teach students critical media literacy skills

Concordia University

This web page addresses the issue of "fake news" and uses it as a springboard for talking about finding trustworthy sources in general

Rivier University Library

This academic library's online guide includes tools for evaluating online information, citation help, and peer reviewing.

University of Texas Library

The purpose of this guide is to help users navigate through the many print and electronic news related resources.

University of Maryland Library

This academic library website lists articles about evaluating sources, and gives specific evaluation strategies for OERs, websites, and fake news.

University of Washington Library

This library guide provides several tools for identifying fake news and evaluating information.

Hillsborough Community College Libraries

This community college library guide lists sites to help students evaluate news sources, and suggests assignments on evaluating sources.

Furman University Library

A resources guide about understanding and evaluating news. Includes issues of "fake news", bias, ethics, "alternative facts", etc.

Ithaca College

An initiative of Ithaca College to provide materials, training and support for the integration of media literacy with critical thinking into classroom curricula.

Colby-Sawyer College Library

A guide for detecting fake, misleading, or biased news.

Annenberg Public Policy Center

FactCheck is a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. They monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases.

Barbara and David P. Mikkelson

Snopes has been the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation for a long time. Snopes is also usually the first to report the facts.

MBFC News

When checking facts these are the 10 sites MBFC News has found to be most valuable and trusted.

Brett Christensen

Hoax Slayer is a website established in 2003 by Brett Christensen, dedicated to critically analyzing the veracity of urban legends. While it is best known for debunking false stories, it also hosts a page listing strange but true urban legends.

Tampa Bay Times

Politifact reports on the accuracy of statements made by elected officials, candidates, their staffs, lobbyists, interest groups and others involved in U.S. politics. Its journalists evaluate original statements and publish their findings on the website, where each statement receives a "Truth-O-Meter" rating.

The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog is run by journalist Glenn Kessler. The site assesses claims made by politicians or political advocacy groups and give out Pinocchios based on its level of accuracy.

More than 2500 media sources can be searched to check their degree of bias. Each source has a scale with a yellow dot that shows the degree of bias. Each source also has a “Notes” section that gives some details about it and an explanation of its bias. Bias is calculated not by just looking at political bias, but also how factual the information is and if they provide links to credible, verifiable sources.

This site rates media bias of sources with content published online. The bias ratings reflect the judgment of the American people. It also presents news stories from three perspectives -- left, center, and right.

Journalists discuss the idea of bias and explain the processes they follow to combat bias in their reporting in this video from facinghistory.org.

The News Literacy Project’s checkology™ virtual classroom is an innovative online library of news literacy learning experiences where students discover how to effectively navigate today's challenging information landscape by mastering the core skills and concepts of news literacy. The engaging interactive lessons are hosted by real-world professionals, including well-known journalists and experts in digital media and the First Amendment.

What is the role of journalism in a democratic society, and how can we become responsible consumers and producers of news and information in the digital age? In a series of 11 lessons, and using the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson as a case study, students explore the media coverage and the protests that followed—driven to a large degree by social media—and learn to become informed and effective civic participants in today’s digital landscape.

The Center for Media Literacy (CML) is an educational organization dedicated to promoting and supporting media literacy education as a framework for accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating and participating with media content, CML MediaLit Kit provides a basic framework for media literacy and a collection of resources - videos, handouts, activities and curricula - that can be used to explore the key questions and core concepts in the media literacy field.

By Michele Kirschenbaum, EasyBib,

January 10, 2017

Looking to test your students’ capabilities at figuring out if a website is real or not? Use these fake websites to help, but be careful! Looks may deceive you! Some of these sites are tougher to catch than others.

By Katherine Schulten and Amanda Christy Brown, NY Times

January 19, 2017

New resources for helping your students evaluate sources in a post-truth world. Divided into two sections — The Problems and The Possible Solutions — it offers practical activities and questions throughout.

By Amy Erin Borovoy, Edutopia,

September 25, 2015

What can you do to help your students become more critical consumers of news media? This video playlist should provide a good entry point to the discussion,

BBC News

November 17, 2016

Fake news stories on the internet were at the center of the post-US election fallout. Seven questions test the ability to disentangle the fact from fiction.

News Literacy Project

Twelve questions will help you test your news literacy knowledge.

News Literacy Project

Subscribe to this resource and every week you will receive a newsletter with an educator's guide to the past week in news literacy. Past issues can be viewed here.

By Tom McFadden, Science With Tom

September 27, 2016

In this article, read how a science teacher used critical thinking, media literacy and health news to teach his students how to become healthy skeptics of the mainstream media.

Brooke Gladstone, On the Media

July 31, 2015

In this 20-minute podcast, Brooke Gladstone takes a deep dive into media misdirection on health and diet news, and puts together two Breaking News Consumer's Handbooks to help you navigate the din.

by John Bohannon

May 27, 2015

The story of how a journalist laid a trap for health reporters with a study on chocolate and health risks. He did purposefully awful science in order to prove that he could find a journal to publish it and then garner worldwide media coverage.