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Gonna make a wee thread of resources & thoughts here re news literacy, not just for young people, but for all. I’m challenging friends & family about once a week now on chatting sensationalist hokum re covid, life & politics. Hold the line, folks.
US Based. A great site and universal resource here. News Literacy Project’s vision is to embed critical thinking about information sharing and news sources throughout the American educational experience. https://newslit.org/about/mission/
If you have a window of conversational opportunity with someone who’s courting conspiracy-based thinking and is resistant to formal resources, preferring hard-hitting real talk instead, Deeyah Khan’s work will never let you down. https://deeyah.com/blog/white-right-meeting-enemy/
UK charity The Literacy Trust has some good resources here, maybe particularly useful for teachers. https://literacytrust.org.uk/policy-and-campaigns/all-party-parliamentary-group-literacy/fakenews/newsliteracy/
A good primer to discussion here from Modern Librarian Memoirs on YouTube. Could be helpful in groups; workplace, school or community spaces.
One thing I’ve found helpful at home is normalising a two-source rule in conversations before new info gets any form of legitimisation. Knowing someone personally who has experienced something worrying - that’s a source. A friend of a friend you never met is not a source.
Finding two non-sensational outlet sources for anything legitimate isn’t hard. If it’s hard to find two sources for info, simply hold off on sharing till you have them. This is one of the easy to see ethical lines I ask my kids particularly to hold.
Netflix has fantastic content for exposing fake news. But this stuff can be deadening too. Who do you trust when there’s well sourced info that govts are unethical? Then it’s important to be ready to talk money in politics and how it unfairly buys power. https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80117542
The keystone to dismantling conspiracy-based thinking is pedalling hard on increasing inclusion & diversity across social structures. The more we understand each other and hold space & respect for myriad human experience, the less we’re able to jettison truth for lazy agendas.
Conspiracy-based thinking always has a prejudiced bedfellow. Always. Racism, sexism, stereotypical beliefs re gender & identity, ableism, poverty-shaming... any or all are concrete buttresses to giving credibility to conspiracy gossip because they’re not fact or experience-based.
