Crash Course is an educational YouTube channel started by the Green brothers, Hank Green and John Green, who are notable for their VlogBrothers channel. Crash Course has been working with MediaWise, a project from the nonprofit PoynterInstitute for Media Studies, to help students evaluate the accuracy of digital information in a 10-episode series on Navigating Digital Information. The curriculum was developed by the Stanford History Education Group and is based around research on civic online reasoning that the group began in 2015. The 10 episodes are designed to help viewers learn how to interact with the internet the way professional fact-checkers do, and along the way come to understand some of the problems with how information feeds are working, and how they can tack against the prevailing winds of misinformation. “Introduction to Online Information,” the first episode of Crash Course Navigating Digital Information, is available for viewing.
In this ReadWriteThink lesson, students read or view a literary text, and then identify and discuss examples of propaganda techniques in the text. Students then explore the use of propaganda in popular culture by looking at examples in the media.
PBS affiliate WETA has made available a list of propaganda techniques that make false connections (such as the techniques of “transfer” and “testimonial”), or constitute special appeals (such as “bandwagon” and “fear”), or are types of logical fallacy (for example, “unwarranted extrapolation”).
The Mind Over Media web platform gives students aged 13 and up an opportunity to explore the subject of contemporary propaganda by hosting thousands of examples of 21st-century propaganda from around the world.