“What the professor never realized as he focused on the page’s superficial features is that the group in question is a socially conservative splinter faction that broke in 2002 from the mainstream American Academy of Pediatrics over the issue of adoption by same-sex couples.”
This shows the importance of not relying on the domain name of a website or if the website looks professional or not to decide if you think that it is using misinformation or not. In my prior post I talking about misinformation as well because I believe it will be one of my biggest struggles in the history classroom and it tends to be really hard for us to spot so I feel as if it is really important for me to familiarize myself with it and the tools to help. In my prior post I talk about encouraging students to leave the website and compare the information from it to other websites, look into what others say about the websites organization, try to find academic articles, etc. This quote really shows that it is essentially to read laterally and to leave the site. If the professor would have left the site and looked into the websites organization he would have been able to see the bias and to make a decision about whether he thought the organization was trustworthy or whether their bias continued into this.
“Other studies have shown that people retweet links without clicking on them and rely too much on search engines.”
In todays heavily online world it is not surprising that many people retweet links without reading them. I am sure that I probably have done that before too and I most certainly have seen others. Many times people will share things with a rant along with it and then when you read it most of their rant is not even applicable or is even contradicted. However, many people would also just believe the person who shared it rather than read it themselves. This is why misinformation spreads so quickly. Misinformation is also typically presented in a way to purposefully make you emotional and to provide a reaction causing you to share it without further looking into it. This is why it is so important for us to encourage our students and ourselves to take a moment even when we are emotional to look into things and to take the time to read them. When you share something without reading it and then make claims that the story/post doesn’t even address or contradicts it makes you look very uneducated.
“Politicians and technologists have warned that meddlers are trying to manipulate elections around the globe by spreading disinformation.”
This quote is something that we should be very aware of and should make our students aware of as well. Especially teaching in a high school classroom where you may be teaching students who can already vote and are definitely teaching students who will be able to vote soon. It is so important that we teach our students that people spread misinformation intentionally in order to sway things the way that they want it. Misinformation is more prevalent in recent years due to the rise of technology which allows it to spread easier and people trust most things they read online. However, it is even worse during election years because people use it to affect the elections. So we must inform our students of this and provide them with the tools to seek out whether or not something is misinformation. Those skills will be useful now and years down the road and will help them to be more well-rounded individuals.
Katy Steinmetz, “How Your Brain Tricks You Into Believing Fake News,” Time, August 9, 2018. https://time.com/5362183/the-real-fake-news-crisis
