Item
FAKE NEWS AND CRITICAL THINKING IN INFORMATION EVALUATION
- Author
- Elli Georgiadou, Harjinder Rahanu, Kerstin Siakas, Claire McGuinness, J. Adam Edwards, Vanessa Hill, Nawaz Khan, Padraig Kirby, Jerald Cavanagh, Ratko Knezevic
- Year
- 2018
- Publisher
- LIMERICK INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (IRELAND)
- DOI/Link
- View Source
- Abstract
-
In the post-truth era we are constantly bombarded with “news” which is fabricated,
distorted, and massaged information, published with the intention to deceive and mislead
others. Such “news” has come to be known as “fake news”. The influence of fake news can
have profound socio-political and cultural effects when translated into action. The ability to
distinguish between real facts, fabricated stories, rumours, propaganda, or opinions is of
paramount importance. The rapid proliferation of information through social media is now
the norm. In this paper we consider the challenge of preparing students, in developing skills
for recognising mis-information, dis-information and mal-information. We argue that
critical thinking for evaluating information should now be considered a basic literacy,
equally important to literacy itself, as well as information and information technology
literacies.
In this paper we revisit Bloom‟s taxonomy of cognitive skills and represent what a learner
can achieve at each level. We customise the traditional moral and ethical concepts
suggested by the US Content Subcommittee of the ImpactCS Steering Committee to flag the
ethical concerns over mis-information, dis-information and mal-information. We report on
current levels of awareness and practices at the authors‟ five higher education institutions,
and reveal varying levels of awareness of the significance of critical literacy and different
practices in each location. The paper concludes with an outline of future work. - Language
- ENGLISH