Webinar: Disinformation and the Literacy Landscape

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Originally presented December 14, 2022

We are now living in an age of “fake news.” While not a new phenomenon, its current iteration has highlighted the various dimensions of how people interact (or do not) with information - information consumption is so much more than people's immediate cognitive processing.

Join Nicole Cooke, the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair at USC, as she addresses our continued and collective battle against misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and the related literacy concepts that can influence our interactions with information and help us intellectually thrive in a post-truth society.

Click below to experience this webinar as a tutorial. When you continue past the introduction to the webinar, you'll be prompted to log in. We require login to view the whole tutorial so we can provide certificates of completion for your records and for professional development credit. No purchase is required and you can create a Niche Academy account if you don't already have one. The certificate will be available for download when you have completed all sections of the tutorial.  

 

Click the link below to download the presentation notes:
Disinformation and the Literacy Landscape notes

Click the link below to download the chat transcript: 
Disinformation and the Literacy Landscape chat 

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The Niche Academy marketplace contains hundreds of tutorials to support libraries, including these:

Lateral Reading Image_02

Fighting Fake News: Lateral Reading

Different sources of information require different reading strategies. Slow, thorough reading might work for print sources, but it doesn’t work for online sources—especially when they are fake, misleading, or trying to get you to buy into an idea without thinking too hard or digging too deep. In this tutorial, you’ll learn about lateral reading, a strategy for analyzing online information that results in reading less, but learning more.

 

False equivalencies

Fighting Fake News: False Equivalencies

Sharing some qualities does not mean two or more things are the same. When someone ignores differences, or gives too much credit to similarities, they are making a false equivalency. t’s easy to be misled by false equivalencies because people often accept comparisons without really thinking about them. And this quick acceptance can cause people to overlook important facts and spread fake news. Whether you are scrolling through social media, watching a debate, writing a paper, or having a conversation, understanding false equivalencies can help you stay focused on the facts.

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Straw man arguments

Fighting Fake News: Straw Man Arguments

Twisting an idea or position so it’s easier to argue against is called a straw man fallacy. Straw man arguments can seem convincing, but they’re actually poor reasoning. It can be hard to avoid straw man arguments in persuasive papers—or arguments with friends! But engaging with a topic fairly and accurately helps refine your own positions and connect better with others. 

 

Burden of proof

Fighting Fake News: Burden of Proof

When you are trying to prove a point during a conversation, you need to provide reasons why it is true. In other words, convincing someone requires evidence. This requirement is known as the burden of proof, and it comes into play in courts of law, political debates, and even casual conversations. During this tutorial, you will learn when the burden of proof is required and what to do when someone tries to evade it.


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