Digital Literacy in regards to fake news and deep fakes and how education can be used to prepare students to identify them

When people consider the word literate, most will compare it to the word illiterate and define it as being able to read and write (Lexico, n.d). However, there is a second definition that defines having either education or knowledge within a specific area (Lexico, n.d). In the case of Digital Literacy, there are many different areas that one could be knowledgeable in, from being able to read and write code to understanding the techniques used in click-baiting on news sites or social media.

With the introduction of smart phones and mobile internet that can be received almost anywhere, people now have access to the entire world’s worth of knowledge at their fingertips to such an extent that it is impossible for parents, teachers, carers, or governments to keep track of everything and ensure that the information being accessed by the students is true or objective. As such, people need to be taught how to understand the information being presented to them, and if need be, how to fact check said information to ensure that what they have is the truth, and not a biased truth or outright lie, such as ideas around the flat earth conspiracy or anti-vaccination movements (BBC Monitoring, 2019; Hoffman, 2019; Silva, 2019).

For young people, the internet can give them access to more information than they know what to do with, whether they want to learn how a car works, or how to code a game, however, the internet isn’t confined to giving young people access to the world’s collective knowledge but also giving the world direct and unfiltered access to them. This unfiltered access leaves young people at risk of being groomed by extremists who convince them to commit acts of terrorism or convince them that they don’t need help with their anorexia or bulimia (Davies, 2009). For the vast majority of young people, their days and weeks are spent within a schooling environment where staff are exposed to many of their conversations between peers. These staff are expected to report any potential tells of extremism to the safeguarding team much in the same regards that they would do with signs of abuse (Home Office, 2019).

However, as far as I am aware, the ability to identify extremism is not actively taught to students in UK schools, nor is how to identify what is truth or fiction on social media or in the news circuit. These skills would not be difficult to integrate into an education system. Horn and Veermans (2019) explored how Finnish students who had been developed their critical thinking skills throughout their education compared to students in the US at the same level of education. Their study showed a statistically significant difference in the mastery of the five topics that they covered, including the identification of the more reliable source. Burkhardt (2017) talks about how young people are likely to judge an article’s credibility on who shared the article with them rather than on the merits of the author or article themselves. To combat this, she argues that critical thinking skills should be taught from an early age such that as they grow up, they are more inclined to ask questions rather than accepting what they read at face value.

Burkhardt also advices to teach young people to be sceptical of what they read online and to check what they’re told against fact checking websites like Snopes, PolitiFact, and Factcheck. It is unlikely however, that these sites will have factchecked articles from a young person’s local area unless its gotten nationwide attention, and as such, students should be encouraged to follow through any citations within an article, such as if another site is mentioned as breaking the story. We should encourage students to investigate claims made by organisations as there are many people online who are willing to lie or create bots to get views, such as in 2016 where over fifty thousand Russian bots were deployed to interfere with the United States presidential election (Swaine, 2018). These bots were far reaching, with over 650,000 people seeing them, including senior advisors for the Trump campaign who retweeted the bots and spread their influence further.

If young people are not taught the critical thinking skills during their time in school to allow them to identify biased viewpoints or how to investigate the source of the information then we leave them ill equipped to identify lies and deceit later on in life.

However, it isn’t enough for teachers to simply teach students how to identify a fake twitter account or how to spot a doctored image, as the techniques used by the people who create disinformation will simply adapt to make their fakes even more convincing, much like how CGI in movies has progressed to look more and more realistic. As such, I would argue that exposure therapy would be a viable method for developing student digital literacy and their ability to identify misinformation. Burkhardt (2017) suggests having students explore ‘databases’ such as Twitter, Google, and Facebook such that they get used to the environments as young people have been found to easily adapt to new digital environments. The report also suggests that young people learn better through trial and error, and it is this idea that I feel could be extended to teaching students how to identify disinformation and misinformation. Using sites such as “Which Face is Real” young people could experiment themselves in a trial and error kind of way to learn how to identify if a picture is faked.

However, teachers must remain vigilant in preparing these kinds of lessons, as unlike subjects like mathematics where the foundational skills of calculus and algebra are unlikely to change from year to year (even if the curriculum does), the improvement in the technology and strategies used to create fake images or fake news stories will continue to ensure that researchers and teaching staff are always on the back foot in countering these issues (McDonald, 2018)

References

BBC Monitoring. (2019, June 20). How anti-vaccine movements threaten global health. Retrieved March 10, 2020, from BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-48585036

Davies, L. (2009). Educating Against Extremism: Towards A Critical Politicisation of Young People. International Review of Education, 55, 183-203.

Hoffman, J. (2019, September 23). How Anti-Vaccine Sentiment Took Hold in the United States. Retrieved March 10, 2020, from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/health/anti-vaccination-movement-us.html

Home Office. (2019). Revised Prevent duty guidance: for England and Wales. Gov.uk. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prevent-duty-guidance/revised-prevent-duty-guidance-for-england-and-wales

Horn, S., & Veermans, K. (2019). Critical thinking efficacy and transfer skills defend against 'fake news' at an international school in Finland. Journal of Research in International Education, 18(1), 23-41.

Lexico. (n.d.). Literate. Retrieved March 10, 2020, from Lexico.com: https://www.lexico.com/definition/literate

McDonald, K. (2018, December 5). How to recognize fake AI-generated images. Retrieved March 12, 2020, from Medium: https://medium.com/@kcimc/how-to-recognize-fake-ai-generated-images-4d1f6f9a2842

Silva, M. (2019, July 18). Flat Earth: How did YouTube help spread a conspiracy theory? Retrieved March 10, 2020, from BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-49021903/flat-earth-how-did-youtube-help-spread-a-conspiracy-theory

Swaine, J. (2018, January 20). Twitter admits far more Russian bots posted on election than it had disclosed. Retrieved March 10, 2020, from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/19/twitter-admits-far-more-russian-bots-posted-on-election-than-it-had-disclosed