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’sverification 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.
The Great Thanksgiving Listen is a national project that empowers young people to create an oral history of contemporary United States by recording an interview with an elder using the freeStoryCorps app for iOS and Android devices.
In an article in Smithsonian Magazine, journalist and digital editor Meilan Solly presents 158 resources chronicling the history of anti-Black violence and inequality in the United States within a narrative that explains and contextualizes them.