This lesson is designed to help 9th grade students be able to define confirmation bias and clickbait. It will start with class discussion and then the students will find examples on their own in current news stories.
Learn about the "fake news" that established long held beliefs about Edgar Allan Poe in this video [2:30] from American Masters, Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive. When Edgar Allan Poe died under mysterious circumstances, his literary rival, Rufus W. Griswold, wrote a high-profile obituary filled with falsehoods that cast him as a lunatic and a madman. Engage students with a background essay, discussion questions, teaching tips, and handout as they explore the mystery behind his death and how fiction can sometimes become accepted as truth.
A foundational guide to types of misinformation, "rumor cues" and more.
Nettie and Webster make their way through Ad Alley and find out that staying focused on a single task while online can be tricky... and getting distracted has consequences.
In previous decades, most news with global reach came from several major newspapers and networks with the resources to gather information directly. The speed with which information spreads now, however, has created the ideal conditions for something called circular reporting. Noah Tavlin sheds light on this phenomenon. [3:42]