Explore the difference between misinformation and disinformation, learn how to evaluate the credibility of digital content, and become a more critical consumer of social media.
Essential Questions
- How can we tell the difference between real, credible content and manipulated or AI-generated misinformation online?
- Why do misinformation and disinformation spread so easily, and how do emotions and algorithms fuel their reach?
- What responsibilities do we have when we consume and share content on social media?
Big Ideas
- Misinformation vs. Disinformation: Social media literacy begins with being able to determine the legitimacy of the information being shown and how to understand the bias and intention of information as it is being presented.
- Managing Credibility: Social media literacy requires the skills and strategies to determine the credibility and legitimacy of information.
- Discerning Reality: With so much information available, people must make informed decisions as to what information is real and what information is fake.
- Responsible Use: Responsible social media use is a skill that must be learned to engage positively and avoid online challenges.
PART 1
What is Social Media Literacy?
Video 01:55 – 03:27
PART 2
Misinformation and Disinformation
Video 03:28 – 08:49
PART 3
Understanding Credibility
Video 08:50 – 13:41
PART 4
Is the News Real?
Video 13:42 – 18:19
Social media is an influential part of our society that is continuing to grow in its integration into every corner of public and private life. As social media evolves, users are faced with important questions and must develop a literacy that helps them overcome the hurdles and pitfalls of social media information.
One of the major challenges that social media offers is deep questions about the legitimacy of the information that users are receiving. There is so much content that it is often difficult for people to weave through the webs of disinformation and misinformation. Being versed in social media literacy provides a skillset to do so and helps someone develop key tools to combat these challenges. This lesson will support students in their development of social media literacy and provide them with the skills and strategies to engage with social media in a productive, positive, and reliable way.
How to use this guide
This guide is designed to enhance your students’ engagement with the video. You can pause at the suggested “Stop/Do/Discuss” points to explore key concepts through discussion and reflection questions provided for each section. Alternatively, you may prefer to show the entire video without breaks and use the discussion questions and activities at the end of this guide (“Summative Activities & Reflection”) for a comprehensive post-viewing discussion.
You can also utilize a flipped classroom approach, assigning the video (in full or in segments) for students to watch at home, then using class time to unpack ideas together through reflection, discussion, or hands-on activities. Choose the approach that best fits your students and classroom setting, whether it’s real-time engagement or a deeper dive after the video.
Discussion Questions
- Navigating Credibility: How does emotion impact the way in which we react and perceive news stories? Describe how social media can play on emotional responses in order to spread information, whether it’s real or fake, credible or unreliable. Ask the students to think about a story that they have seen on social media that evoked an emotional reaction. Did it impact the way that they understood the information? How might this be a dangerous way to portray news stories?
- Images and Videos: Images and videos can have a powerful impact on social media users. Often, information will not be believed without an image or a video to “prove” the information to be true. AI can generate images and videos that appear to be real. How do we navigate this new frontier? Read this BBC article and use the examples provided in the article to develop strategies to determine whether or not images are AI-generated.
Learning Activities
- Social Media in Real Life: Create a real-life social media landscape in your classroom. Have each student create a profile by using a large poster board.Each profile should include the following:
- The name of the student or a “handle” that they would like to go by
- A picture of the student Five pieces of information about the student (allow students to include any information they want)
- A quote that best describes themselves
Once created, hang these “profiles” around the room. Each day, students must post or share something on their posterboard, they must make two comments on other students’ posts, and they must “reshare” something from someone else’s profile by using colored sticky notes. The posts and reshares must be made on a different student’s profile each round. After two weeks, track the information that has been disseminated in class. This exercise will illustrate how information can be presented and how it travels through the social media ecosystem that you have created. Students will journal on their experience during this activity and analyze what they are observing in terms of the information that is traveling through the social media platform.
- Around the Room Literacy: Each student should bring in two pieces of social media—one that they deem to be truthful and credible, and one that they deem to be misinformation or disinformation. Students should print the posts on separate sheets of paper and place them in a hat or a bucket. Each student should pick one of the posts and conduct a “social media analysis” of whether the post is truthful or if it’s presenting misinformation or disinformation. The students’ analysis should include the following strategies:
- Fact-check
- Question the source and intent
- Does the source show multiple sides of the story?
- Is there a clear bias to this story?
- Is evidence presented in this story which makes it credible?
- Is there anything that makes this source seem not credible?
- Video & Curriculum: ConnectED, Media Literacy
- Explore the definition of media literacy, key factors that influence media production, and key media biases, and learn how to become a critical consumer of media.
- Film: The Social Dilemma (2020), Netflix
- This film will help students to understand the impact of social media on society and how social media literacy can combat the pitfalls and challenges that social media presents.
- Resource Hub: Common Sense Education
- Provides research-based lessons to support students’ social-emotional learning and digital well- being.
- Resource Hub: PBS Technological Literacy
- Resource for educators to create new lessons on social media literacy
- Website: The News Literacy Project
- A nonpartisan education nonprofit dedicated to building a national movement to create systemic change in American education to ensure all students are skilled in news literacy, giving them the knowledge and ability to participate in civic society.
- Website: Media Literacy Now
- An advocacy site which encourages media literacy among students
- Website: Social Media Research Institute
- SMRI seeks to create healthy social media use through research, education, and support.