Assignment: general media
Assignment: general media
Permalink:
Note: there are four parts in this assignment. Each part starts with a set of readings and concludes with a writing exercise in which you will create a post on the discussion board (in Blackboard). Hint: before starting at the top, skim through the document all the way to the end; make sure to note what you’ll have to do in each section.
Follow the instructions closely.
READING
a. To appreciate why it’s important for you, a 21st century college student, to work on becoming more digitally literate, read this excerpt from Ventimiglia and Pullman’s (2016) article, “From Written to Digital: The New Literacy.”
b. To further appreciate why it’s important for any 21st century citizen to become more digitally literate, read Silverman and Singer-Vine’s (2016) article, “Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says.”
c. Read Wineburg’s (2016) overview of the Stanford Digital Literacy study. d. Test yourself on both the first set of example items and the second set of
example items from the Stanford Digital Literacy study. Make sure you read through all the examples of students’ correct and incorrect answers (and why their answers were correct versus incorrect).
e. Read the following documents, each of which explains several steps for improving digital literacy. Make a list of all the steps. (You should have more than 20 steps on your list.) Although it might feel as though these documents re- mention some of the same steps, overlap and repetition are always helpful for learning, and each document explains some steps that the other articles don’t.
1. Inskeep’s (2016) article, “A Finder’s Guide to Facts” 2. Green’s (2017) article, “The Honest Truth about Fake News … and How
Not to Fall for It“ 3. Davis’s (2016) article, “Fake or Real? How to Self-Check the News and
Get the Facts“ 4. The International Federation of Librarian Associations’ (no date)
Infographic 5. Facebook’s (no date) list of “Tips to Spot False News“
Part I: Digital Literacy
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Go to the Discussion Board, Assignment #3, Part 1 on Blackboard. To make a new post, click on “Create Thread.” In the subject box, put “first initial_last name”, for example, “D_Johnson”. Make a new post of at least 200 words in which you discuss the following:
1. Which three steps for improving digital literacy were you the most familiar with before reading these documents?
2. Which three steps were you the least familiar with before reading these documents?
3. Which three errors that students made in the Stanford Digital Literacy study (illustrated in either the first or the second set of example items, or both) surprised you the least – and why did those five errors surprise you the least?
READING
To understand both writers’ financial motivations to produce false digital information and readers’ psychological tendencies to believe and promote false digital information, read
1. Pogue’s (2017) article, “The Ultimate Cure for the Fake News Epidemic Will Be More Skeptical Readers,”
2. Borel’s (2017) article, “Fact-Checking Won’t Save Us from Fake News,” 3. Engelhaupt (2016) article, “You’ve Probably Been Tricked by Fake
News and Don’t Know It,” 4. BBC Trending’s (2017) article, “The Rise of Left-Wing, Anti-Trump Fake
News,” and 5. the abstract of Bessi and Ferrara’s (2016) empirical study, “Social Bots
Distort the 2016 Presidential Election Online Discussion.”
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Go to the Discussion Board, Writing Assignment #3, Part 2. Make a new post in which you
6. list, from the articles you read, the three exact quotes that intrigued you the most about WRITERS’ financial motivation to produce false digital information;
7. list, from the articles you read, the three exact quotes that intrigued you the most about READERS’ psychological tendencies to believe and promote false digital information; and
Part II: Fake News
