Dr. David Childs, Ph.D.
Northern Kentucky University
“Researchers at Princeton and New York University found that Facebook users 65 and over posted seven times as many articles from fake news websites, compared to adults under 29.”
With the Russian interference with the recent general election and the proliferation of unreliable articles and information sources, it is ever more important to have the skill to decipher fake information verses reliable information. The Cambridge Dictionary defines fake news as “false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke.” The Cambridge Dictionary also states that “there is concern about the power of fake news to affect election results.” Furthermore, the term fake news has also been used as a political weapon to discredit the media altogether.
Many people are becoming frustrated by the number of information and articles they are bombarded with on social media. What is even more frustrating is the amount of false information and outright lies being published and dispersed throughout cyberspace. The National Public Radio recently wrote an article about training senior citizens to identify unreliable news sources appropriately entitled “With An Election On The Horizon, Older Adults Get Help Spotting Fake News.” The article points out that adults that did not grow up as digital natives struggle with some of the basic strategies needed to identify unreliable sources. Susan Nash, a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center on Longevity published an article entitled “Teaching Older Americans to Identify Fake News Online.” Another NPR article from October 2019 entitled Fake News: How To Spot Misinformation gives five tips to help us identify misinformation: 1) Exercise skepticism, 2) understand the misinformation landscape, 3) Pay extra attention when reading about emotionally-charged and divisive topics 4) Investigate what you’re reading or seeing, 5) Yelling probably won’t solve misinformation.
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I really enjoy the content of this article. Media literacy is something that I am big on and the amount of people who believe anything the internet tells them is crazy. I know I get lots of conversations with my mom about something she saw on facebook just to find out it isn’t real. I take everything with a grain of salt when I read and tend to do extra research. With everything happening with COVID-19, it so important that people look into reliable sources and not just rely on facebook articles.
I think this is an extremely relevant post! I chose it because of all the coronavirus stuff going on, I wanted to learn what “fake news” is. It is so hard right now to trust anything from the internet that isn’t straight from the CDC. Honestly, I am not sure if i even trust our government as a reliable source of news. I like the statistic about Facebook because EVERYTHING on Facebook is not correct. Someone will share something from two years ago on Facebook making everyone believe it was today because that is when they are seeing it.
This article is a very relevant topic in our lives now and most likely will be for generations to come. The media is sort of its own lifeform, which can be very beneficial and efficient but, can also be a little scary and misleading at times. I know that the article is not just focusing on older adults but, it is important to point out that while they may be more susceptible to having trouble identifying false information from the media, anyone can really fall under this scope. Sometimes I think many of us think the older generations are more likely to not see the difference in untrue information or that we may also think people that share this kind of media may be uneducated, that simply isn’t correct. Even as a fairly well-educated college student and as a young adult, I too sometimes find it hard to find the correct version of the information. Especially when there are so many different versions out there. I think the media, as I mentioned before is a double-edged sword. It can help us in countless ways and makes life more efficient overall in so many aspects. But media can be abused and can really do harm if not used properly, we see this with things like cyberbullying and misinformation can also fall into this category of harm. I have always been a strong proponent of becoming less media and technology dependent. I think we should use it and enjoy it but dial back on our media intake. Anything that is overused is not good and if we can strike a balance between our intake of media, it can allow us to listen to our own selves more. If we are able to clear out all the other voices, we can be driven more by our own thoughts and not become these robotic media influenced sheep like thinkers.
– This article stood out to me because of the heading “Fake News”. I think this term is being thrown around a lot right now and throughout many stressful times. Fake news is something we all need to watch out for because its real. As teachers we are going to need to be able to sort through the fake news to find out what the actual truth is. We will need to show students what reliable and non-reliable new sources are so that when they are looking things up, they know if what they are reading is real or not. In order to teach our students what reliable sources are, we need to be able to pick those out for ourselves. I have been trapped into reading the news articles that pop up on my Facebook and instantly believe that everything in them is true without even thinking twice about it. We need to be able to rationalize through the media especially through times like this.
I thought this article looked interesting with “fake news” as the title. Do we really know how to identify what news is fake while we are reading it? I think the statistic at the top is an eye-opener. I do believe that people that are 65 or older tend to believe most everything they read. I think this is especially true with news having to do with the election. With the help of this article, I think older people will be able to easily identify what is fake and not to post it/believe it. I think if we stop posting the fake news then maybe we might be able to somehow stop the spread.
I really enjoyed this article because, especially with all the chaos happening in the world right now, people need to be paying special attention to the news to know what is going on, and having tips to help people know what news is real and what isn’t is very important. I didn’t realize how much more likely those over 65 were to post news that was fake than someone under the age of 29, I think that older individual are less skeptical when they are reading things and they assume that everything on the internet must be true, especially when a news outlet is the one sharing the information. However, those under the age of 29 have seen and heard about this large wave of “fake news” and are much more likely to take a closer look and do more research before they believe everything they read online. Also, I think that nowadays we are being taught more and more to not believe everything that we read on the internet, whereas in the earlier days that is where people looked to find reliable information about things that were happening in the world. I think this is a great resource to show students because then when they are looking at current events they know what to look for to be accurately informed about what is happening in the world. Also, this will help students when they are doing research of any kind, this way they will be able to use reliable sources and make sure that what they are reading is accurate and up to date.
I like that the emphasis of the article was on teaching older people how to navigate a digital world and critically assess news. I have observed digital literacy lessons for middle school students, and while certainly important, it does feel slightly redundant as most (certainly not all) kids seem to have a better intuitive sense of the accuracy and legitimacy of an article. They are perhaps more skeptical by nature, driven by their experiences from a young age of interacting online.
By contrast, I think older people grew up in an era where the news was largely taken as fact, since it was delivered to them by a newspaper, radio, or TV. There are more barriers to entry in those formats than just posting stories on Facebook, so the contents tended to be more grounded in reality. As a result, older people, who have a tremendous power and voice in society, are not well trained to assess “fake news” on the internet. Helping them to make those informed decisions is key to ensuring that they use their power in a responsible manner.
The term “Fake News” is something that we hear in society almost daily. I knew just from the title that I was going to read and respond to this article because I felt like I could learn a lot about the meaning behind the word. The fact that researchers at Princeton and New York University found that people over 65 posted seven times as many articles from fake news websites, compared to adults under 29, really surprised me. I think this may be because people under the age of 29 are accustomed to navigating this fake media world. It’s important as teachers that we instill in our students from a young age that we cannot always believe everything we read on the internet or see on the news.
This article was intriguing to read as a future educator because it is important to have the skill of deciphering fake information so we know we are sharing valuable information with students. This will allow teachers to be role models for children so they learn how to recognize fake news themselves. It was surprising in the article to read about the concern regarding the power of fake news to affect election results. Although fake news can sometimes be looked at as a joke, it can negatively impact those who might buy into the falseness on serious issues in the world. As technology continues to evolve in our modern world, we must work to educate future generations on how to avoid news that is full of lies and over dramatized stories. It is also easy for senior citizens to get tangled in the fake news because they did not grow up in a society surrounded with technology. If we do not teach students now how to identify fake news, their thinking will be skewed as they age. In my future classroom, I want to help students learn how to investigate what they are reading or seeing on a deeper level so they can distinguish facts from fiction.