‘Dismaying’ Inability To Tell Fake News

Name_____________________________________________________________Students Have ‘Dismaying’ Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds

An exercise in information literacy

Read the  NPR story Students Have ‘Dismaying’ Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Findsat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818/study-finds-students-have-dismaying-inability-to-tell-fake-news-from-real   (also linked in BlackBoard)

then answer the following questions:

PART I:

1. What is the main point this story is conveying (thesis)?

2. What is the main source this author is citing to back up her thesis?

3. Who was asked by the researchers to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles?

4. What does the author mean by “native ad?”

5. Describe what the researchers found when testing middle schoolers’ abilities to distinguish between traditional and native ads.

6. Look at the following tweet:

Evaluate this tweet using the evaluation process that you personally employ when trying to decide whether a piece of information is a good data source. Then tell me whether this tweet is a good data source and why or why not.

PART II

1. In the second line of the story, there is a blue hyperlink on the words “…a new study…”please click on this link and answer the following questions:

1. Where on the Internet does this source reside? What can you tell from the URL?
2. Between which two dates (mm/yyyy) did the researchers administer tasks?

1. What was included in their sites for field-testing?

1. What are the subject headings associated with this work?

1. What type of writing is it (genre)?