Overview

What does it mean to be “media literate”? — Students will use media literacy skills to navigate through the perils of the land of online misinformation with the Teen Fact Checking Network, and then analyze their own social media platforms to see if they may be stuck in an echo chamber.

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Define the term “media literacy and explain what it means to be media literate
• Identify different types of misinformation and choose the best strategies to fact -check them
• Define the term “echo chamber” and be able to explain how to get out of one

Downloadable lesson documents

• Student Handout
• Teacher Tips
• Transcript

Before you watch

Based on what you have learned in the how2Internet series, what does it mean to be a media literate digital citizen?

While you watch

Preview the following questions. Then answer them while they watch the How2Internet video. According to the video…

1. If you are feeling big emotions like fear, anger, or excitement from a post online, this is a red flag to pause for a moment and read past the headline to learn all of the _______________ of a social media post or news article.
2. When reading past the headline, look for the primary sources of the information and whether they are _______________. Online scammers try to make you feel _______________ or special so you don’t think logically.
3. Three questions to ask when you see a claim online that is an opinion or biased, are
   1. _______________ is behind the information?
   2. What is the _______________?
   3. What do other _______________ say?
4. Two media literacy strategies that can help you find reliable evidence are _______________ reading and reading _______________.
5. You can avoid creating echo chambers in your social media feeds by following a variety of journalists, public figures, and organizations that reflect a _______________ range of perspectives
6. Critical _______________ is when you do not “like”, “share” or “comment” on posts that may contain misinformation in order to cause controversy.

After you watch

1. Why is it helpful to critically ignore controversial posts that may contain misinformation?
2. Think about the journalists, public figures, and organizations you follow on your social media platforms. How diverse is your feed?

Extension activity

List the journalists, public figures, and organizations you follow on one of your social media platforms in the category which best reflects their perspective. If one category seems to be fuller than others, brainstorm who you could follow to balance it out and make your social media feed more diverse
LEFT (Progressive) — MIDDLE (Moderate) — RIGHT (Conservative)

Exit Ticket

After all you have learned from the Teen Fact-Checking Network, define “Media Literacy” in your own words.

Standards

ISTE 1.3.b EVALUATE INFORMATION Students evaluate the accuracy, perspective, credibility and relevance of information, media, data or other resources.

ISTE 1.3.c CURATE INFORMATION Students curate information from digital resources using a variety of tools and methods to create collections of artifacts that demonstrate meaningful connections or conclusions.

CC.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6 Analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement).

CC.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.

Chris Schwalm is a youth producer at PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs (SRL). Before coming to SRL, Chris taught high school journalism for 20 years in Lancaster, Penn. For 12 of those years, Chris reported on nights and weekends for the Lancaster News. In addition to the How2Internet series, Chris wrote SRL and MediaWise’s Teen Fact Checking Network lesson series on media literacy. You can reach him on Twitter/X @cschwalm.

These lessons were developed by PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs in partnership with MediaWise and the Teen Fact-Checking Network, which are part of the Poynter Institute. This partnership has been made possible with support from Google.

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