Curriculum Providing Guidance on Verifying Content from the Social Web

First Draft—a project of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy based at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government—uses research-based methods to fight misinformation and disinformation online. Additionally, it provides practical and ethical guidance in how to find, verify, and publish content sourced from the social web. First Draft’s verification curriculum addresses how to corroborate eyewitness media, fabricated websites, visual memes, and manipulated videos. A five-unit course is designed primarily for journalists; a one-hour abridged version is designed for the general public. Participants can take either course from start to finish or excerpt elements to integrate into classrooms and courses, with proper attribution. First Draft provides resources in several languages, including Spanish.

Plus: A Field Guide to “Fake News” and Other Information Disorders looks at how digital methods, data, tools, techniques, and research approaches can be used to increase understanding of the politics, production, circulation of, and responses to, fake news online.

Journalism Media Literacy

Online Course Focusing on News Literacy Skills

Founded in 2008, the News Literacy Project (NLP) helps students and teachers discern fact from fiction in the digital age. In May 2016, the project launched Checkology, an online interactive course that helps students understand and appreciate the role of the press, introduces them to different types of news—from entertainment to opinion to branded content—and teaches them the critical thinking skills they’ll need to spot misinformation.

Challenge to Turn a Unit of Study into a Podcast

National Public Radio’s first-ever NPR Student Podcast Challenge is a chance for teachers and students in grades 5–12 across the country to turn their classrooms into production studios, their assignments into scripts, and their ideas into sound. To participate in the challenge, students need to produce a podcast of three to twelve minutes in length on their smartphone or computer, with easily available software.

Media Literacy Game for Detecting Viral Deceptions

NewsFeed Defenders, by iCivics and FactCheck.org, is a free media literacy game that engages students with the standards of journalism, showing them how to spot a variety of methods behind the viral deceptions they face today. To play the game, students join a fictional social media site focused on news and information, where they meet challenges to level up from guest user to site administrator.

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