Research Guides: "Fake News," Misinformation, &amp; Disinformation: Teaching Resources

Lessons, Activities, Materials, and more

Spot the Troll
An online quiz quiz where you examine images of real social media content and decide whether it's from a legitimate account or an internet troll. From Clemson University Media Forensics Hub.
Confirmation and Other Biases
From Facing History and Ourselves, this is a lesson that explores the ways in which biases affect news and information—how news is created and reported (by journalists and others) and how we interpret it.
Verifying Breaking News
From Facing History and Ourselves, a lesson on reviewing news accounts about the killing of Michael Brown from the initial days following the shooting to get a sense of the ways that complex stories unfold over time.
News Literacy Course Packs
The full News Literacy course, developed at Stony Brook University, organizes the material into 8 concepts that are spread amongst our 14 week course that take students from the first information revolution of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to the Digital Age of Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. Each lesson stands alone or can easily be integrated into your program. Each course pack includes PowerPoint presentations, associated media, lecture notes, and recitation materials.
Lessons Ripped from the Headlines
News literacy lessons based on recent news, compiled by Center for News Literacy.
Making Sense of the News: News Literacy Lessons for Digital Citizens MOOC
A six-week Coursera MOOC focused on helping learners develop their critical thinking skills to enable them to better identify reliable information in news reports and to become better informed about the world in which we live. The course will discuss the key elements of journalism from the viewpoint of the news audience.
New York Times: Evaluating Sources in a Post-Truth World
Geared for classroom use, this is a sample lesson plan on analyzing fake news
Evaluating News Sites: Credible or Clickbait?
This group activity takes about 30 minutes and can be used for many different audiences by adjusting the examples used.

Activity: Evaluate Bias & Quality of Media Sites

Vanessa Otero created and posted this diagram which ended up being shared widely via social media.

Discuss the diagram in class and then use this blank version of the diagram to have students do their own evaluation of where certain media organizations fall using this criteria. Assign them to look at certain organizations and have them paste the logos where they believe they rate.