Encouraging News Literacy Among Consumers Called Essential in Fighting Fake News
Consumers should play a role in filtering out fake news across social media platforms and other websites, said a wide range of experts on news literacy. They said such literacy is an essential component and perhaps the best way of fighting fake news.
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Facebook and Google are using technological and collaborative measures to fight the spread of fake news online. Recent efforts have focused on getting readers, viewers and listeners to be more critical and skeptical of the news reports they consume. Last week, Facebook co-launched a $14 million initiative to advance news literacy (see 1704030007), and Google is giving readers a "Fact Check" tool to help people make "more informed judgments" (see 1704070018). Lower-tech methods may ultimately bear much fruit, experts said in interviews last week.
"It's not a choice to say we should or shouldn't improve news literacy," said Michael MaLoon, News Media Alliance vice president-innovation. "There is a role in questioning yourself and questioning what you’re consuming." He said consumers should "look deeper" into stories and ask whether they come from reputable sources or click-bait sites.
Jeff Blevins, who heads the University of Cincinnati journalism department, said consumers need to better understand how the news industry works, which sources of news are legitimate and even something about the technology that spreads fake news, which he defined as the "deliberate spread of misinformation disguised as reporting from a legitimate news source." He said the 2016 fake online story with the headline, "Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President,” showed it was published by WTOE 5 News. No TV station has those call letters but an AM radio station does, he said. Readers should think deeper why a local news outlet would report this when such a story would certainly be reported by several national and international outlets, he said.
Compared with the older, broader concept of media literacy, news literacy is relatively new within higher education, emerging over the past several years. Jonathan Anzalone, a Stony Brook University lecturer and assistant director of the decade-old Center for News Literacy, said ultimately the "onus" will be on consumers to question stories because companies like Facebook are limited in what they can and should do. Becoming more news literate could help prevent fake news from propagating, and it could even help consumers better identify sponsored content or "sloppy, bad journalism," he said.
The top challenge fighting fake news is confirmation bias, said Anzalone. He pointed to the fake "Pizzagate" story involving a man who, after reading a fabricated internet conspiracy that claimed Hillary Clinton and others were using Washington, D.C., restaurant for child-sex trafficking, fired shots in the establishment. People are "more inclined to believe and less inclined to think critically about it because it matches their view of the world or satisfies some emotional need," he said. Anzalone said Stony Brook, with the University of Hong Kong, recently developed a six-week online course to help people develop critical thinking skills so they can better identify reliable news.
Most news literacy efforts have focused on college, middle- and high-school students. Darragh Worland, vice president-digital media with the News Literacy Project, said NLP, founded in 2008, works with secondary school students to teach the discipline so they can become more engaged and informed. She said news literacy can't be picked up instantly, calling it a "discipline that you learn and a set of tools you apply over time." NLP teaches students to critically evaluate news stories, whether mainstream or blog posts, in classrooms and online courses. In January, NLP partnered with Facebook to develop a public service advertising campaign (see 1701110064) to raise awareness among the platform's users about being more skeptical about what they read and view.
The campaign is aimed at several million users who have shared fake news on the platform, giving them tips and raising their awareness to verify and vet information before they share it, said Worland. "Think of it as a virus and you’re inoculating people individually by giving them the tools to stop the sharing." Targeted users, found through a Facebook analysis of user behavior, lie across the political spectrum and are demographically and geographically diverse, she noted. The project will get data after the PSA launches in late spring to gauge the campaign's effectiveness. NLP is also part of the $14 million News Integrity Initiative announced last week that includes Facebook, Mozilla and the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund to advance news literacy and improve trust in legitimate journalism globally.
MaLoon said the News Media Alliance launched a collaborative "long-tail" campaign two weeks ago against fake news (see 1703280003) aimed at raising awareness about the importance of real news produced by trusted media outlets and journalists. He said the campaign is providing posts and stories and print and digital products that address what consumers can do to help. The University of Cincinnati's Blevins said he's teaching a class in the fall about fake news. When he was putting together the course, he said, he initially thought it would be a one-off, but he now realizes the issue of fake news isn't going away. "Those who propound it are going to find other ways more clever and more deceptive."