S T R AT E G I E S F O R A D D R E S S I N G M E D I A L I T E R A C Y G A P S I N T H E C L A S S R O O M

BE YON D H YP E , H YS TE R I A & H EA DL I N ES

Academic Innovation Studio | March 1, 2017

Michael LarkinCollege Writing

Programs

For more info and links about today’s presentation, visit

CultureMulching.com

Slow down, and ask:

W.A.I.S.T.

“Why am I sharing this?”

A widely circulated false quote from Donald Trump

Fake Facebook news post about Barack Obama

The Assignment1) Choose two sources shared via social

media2) Describe what they are3) Explain why you’d tend to share them

quickly4) Identify and evaluate the sources5) Consider the effects on your audience6) Would you still share them?

[See CultureMulching.com for the assignment sheet.]

The students: pretty good at detecting truth, even better at (and probably more concerned with) anticipating what their audience would like.

The students’ advice (distilled):

“Use your mind!”

“Use your intuition!”

(A potentially useful tension there between awareness of both reason and emotion—the latter being what drives so much of fake news’ virality.)

“The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster (1909)

“Beware of first- hand ideas!”….“Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element—direct observation….And in time…there will come a generation that has got beyond facts…a generation...which will see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as they would like it to have happened, but as it would have happened, had it taken place in the days of the Machine.”

For more details about this assignment and for useful links to articles and other critical evaluation tools for fighting fake news, visit:

CultureMulching.com

Thanks!

Beverly Crawford• Freshmen seminar: bit.ly/fake-news-ucb• UW course:

callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html• World News: bit.ly/afterlife-science

Leslea Hlusko

IB35AC Human Biological Variation impact

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-canine_megadontia 577 views, ~6 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans 61,608 views, ~692 per day (12/1/2016 –

2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row_Cancer_Study 1,023 views, ~12 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxic_ventilatory_response 1,284 views, ~14 per day (12/1/2016 –

2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_stress 19,545 views, ~220 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiotropy 41,355 views, ~465 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease) 168,194 views, ~1,890 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fore_people 12,528 views, ~141 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperandrogenism 22,722 views, ~255 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_mismatch 143,814 views, ~1,616 per day (12/1/2016 –

2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence 7,028 views, ~79 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet-induced_obese 711 views, ~8 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_variability 10,612 views, ~119 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert 30,988 views, ~348 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_M._Southam 4,957 views, ~56 per day (12/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_for_Human_Research_Protections 1,460 views, ~16 per day (12/1/2016

– 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_fertility 4,255 views, ~12 per day (3/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_sports 30,867 views, ~112 per day (3/1/2016 –

2/28/2017)• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_health 47,364 views, ~130 per day (3/1/2016 – 2/28/2017)

610,892 page views of 19 Wikipedia articles were

provided with better information thanks to

Berkeley students.

Help from the library• Contact your subject librarian• guides.lib.berkeley.edu/evaluating-

resources• guides.lib.berkeley.edu/fake-news