{"id":50625,"date":"2020-01-07T11:11:01","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T19:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=50625"},"modified":"2020-01-07T11:11:01","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T19:11:01","slug":"why-media-education-in-schools-needs-to-be-about-much-more-than-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/why-media-education-in-schools-needs-to-be-about-much-more-than-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Why media education in schools needs to be about much more than \u2018fake news\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The 2019 general election is already being remembered as the one where\u00a0misinformation went mainstream<\/a>. It was, of course, already on the political agenda after the 2016 referendum and US election, with growing numbers of\u00a0academics<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0parliament<\/a>\u00a0sounding the alarm over foreign actors using so-called \u201cfake news<\/a>\u201d to disrupt the democratic processes.<\/p>\n

But what was seen over the election period was not the work of fringe actors. Instead, major political parties appeared to adopt tactics previously associated with shady players operating at the edges of the information ecosystem. No major party was entirely innocent, as evidenced by\u00a0First Draft\u2019s Cross Check project<\/a>. But the Conservatives\u2019 campaign repeatedly adopted controversial tactics. Tactics such as\u00a0having its press office pose as a fact-checking service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0editing BBC news footage<\/a>\u00a0to imply that prominent journalists supported the party\u2019s line on Brexit.<\/p>\n

Voters,\u00a0the evidence suggests<\/a>, were caught in a storm of\u00a0misleading Facebook posts<\/a>, memes and tweaked videos. This was a covert propaganda campaign and its impact has yet to be established.<\/p>\n

Research from the Reuters Institute for News<\/a>\u00a0has shown for some time that growing numbers of people in the UK access their news online \u2013 74% in 2018. Over a third (39%) get news via social media.<\/p>\n

But recent reports have revealed that the situation is even more complex, with work by\u00a0the Guardian<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ofcom<\/a>\u00a0showing people over-reporting news consumption, skimming over headlines and consuming so-called news via user-generated memes, celebrity influencer posts and politicians on social media.<\/p>\n

Information crisis<\/strong><\/h4>\n

There have been\u00a0calls for urgent reform to the laws around political advertising<\/a>\u00a0to take account of this confusing digital landscape during elections. This is something that politicians must take seriously in the months that follow.<\/p>\n

But there is also space for a bottom-up response to this information crisis. The future electorate must be taught how to navigate the modern news landscape. Young people also need to be helped to understand why \u2013 in this age of misinformation \u2013 public interest news is more important than ever.<\/p>\n

Far from being \u201cdigital natives\u201d, evidence from the US points to a generation of young people who have no idea where their information online comes from, or why they are reading it. A\u00a0report by the Stanford History Education Group<\/a>\u00a0evaluated the online reasoning skills of 3,446 high school students age 12 to 17 between June 2018 and May 2019. They described the results they found as \u201ctroubling\u201d.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence to suggest young people in the UK are any better. In fact, the 2018\u00a0Commission on Fake News and the Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills<\/a>\u00a0found that only 2% of children have the critical literacy skills needed to identify a credible news story.<\/p>\n

News literacy needed<\/strong><\/h4>\n

A growing number of educators, policy makers and third-sector groups are calling for news and critical digital literacy to be taught in schools, with over\u00a0half of teachers reporting<\/a>\u00a0that the current national curriculum does not equip pupils with the literacy skills they need to tackle fake news.<\/p>\n

In its\u00a0final report on Fake News<\/a>, published in February 2019, the UK parliament\u2019s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee reiterated its calls for digital literacy to be the fourth pillar of education alongside reading, writing and maths. But thus far these calls have fallen on deaf ears.<\/p>\n

In its\u00a0response to the committee\u2019s report<\/a>\u00a0the government insisted there was no need, arguing students already study the core components of digital literacy in history, English and IT. There have\u00a0also been suggestions <\/a>\u00a0that governmental action is not needed because others are active in this space.<\/p>\n

There are indeed news organisations, charities and others running news literacy workshops in schools, covering topics such as how articles are put together, and why news matters. The government-commissioned\u00a0Cairncross review into the future of journalism<\/a>\u00a0highlighted some of these and suggested that more collaboration between them could be encouraged as part of a governmental media literacy strategy.<\/p>\n

These initiatives, such as\u00a0NewsWise<\/a>, a Google-funded partnership between the Guardian Foundation and the National Literacy Trust aimed at primary school children, do valuable work. But many are limited in scope and scale, reliant on external funding and in most cases not subject to any independent evaluation or benchmarking.<\/p>\n

And the numbers do not add up. There are close to nine million schoolchildren in England according to\u00a0Department for Education figures<\/a>\u00a0from 2018-2019. But such initiatives are reaching no more than 10,000 children \u2013 and that is a generous estimate. This is insufficient to deal with the scale of the challenge.<\/p>\n

Check your sources<\/strong><\/h4>\n

After he found himself at the centre of a \u201cfake news\u201d row about a genuine picture his newspaper published of a boy lying on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary during the final week of the election campaign,\u00a0the editor of the Yorkshire Post urged readers<\/a>\u00a0not to trust a social media poster who \u201cdisappears into the night\u201d. Instead, he urged them to appreciate the difference between that and verified, independent and accountable journalism.<\/p>\n

But this is easier said than done. News is no longer spoon-fed by a handful of gatekeeper media outlets. This is not a bad thing, but to enable tomorrow\u2019s votes to adopt a healthy news diet, schools must equip them with the skills to do this. And the government needs to act to make this happen sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

Author Bios:<\/strong> Frances Yeoman is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Liverpool John Moores University and Kate Morris is a Lecturer in Journalism, Goldsmiths at the University of London<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2019 general election is already being remembered as the one where\u00a0misinformation went mainstream. It was, of course, already on the political agenda after the 2016 referendum and US election, with growing numbers of\u00a0academics\u00a0and\u00a0parliament\u00a0sounding the alarm over foreign actors using so-called \u201cfake news\u201d to disrupt the democratic processes. But what was seen over the election […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":50626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-50625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy media education in schools needs to be about much more than \u2018fake news\u2019 - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/why-media-education-in-schools-needs-to-be-about-much-more-than-fake-news\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why media education in schools needs to be about much more than \u2018fake news\u2019 - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The 2019 general election is already being remembered as the one where\u00a0misinformation went mainstream. 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