Fake News & Misinformation: How to Spot and Verify

Critical thinking and online reading need to go hand in hand--but they often don't. Students click, swipe, and believe because they don't know how to do otherwise. At times, so do we. And that's a problem. Fighting Fake News combats this challenge by helping you model how to read, myth-bust, truth-test, and respond in ways that lead to wisdom rather than reactivity.

Detecting Deception applies the concepts of logical argumentation to supplement the verification techniques that are the stock and trade of any media professional. Pithy and practical, Amanda Sturgill draws from present day news examples to help students recognize the most common bad arguments people make. Detecting Deception is an essential tool for training future journalists to build stories that recognize faulty arguments and hold their subjects to a higher standard.

Through his research, Schwartz uncovered new information about the familiar story of Orson Welles's 1938 CBS Mercury Theatre radio play broadcast of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds. He recounts in detail how the production was developed and organized by Welles and the panic it caused initially to listeners when the play was interrupted by news broadcasts that Martians had landed in New Jersey. This in fact was "fake news" and a part of the play. Did the broadcast actually result in people panicking across the US, as was reported in major newspaper headlines the next day?

Contents: Introduction to Media Literacy -- Keys to Interpreting Media Messages. Process ; Historical context ; Cultural context ; Structure ; Framework ; Production elements ; Worksheet: Keys to interpreting media messages. -- Media Formats. Journalism ; Advertising ; American political communications ; Digital media communications. -- Issues and Outcomes. Issues in media communication ; Outcomes.

Contents: Introduction: if it's on the internet, it must be true / Anne P. Mintz -- Social media and intentional misinformation / Meg Smith -- They know where you live : guarding your privacy and identity / Cynthia Hetherington -- Demonizing the "other" / Eli Edwards -- Ebuyer beware / Ben Fractenberg -- Information warfare and cybersecurity / Deborah A. Liptak -- The intentional misleading of the American public : political misinformation / Laura Gordon-Murnane -- Charity scams