Learning activities: Fact-checking and disinformation

Learning activities: Fact-checking & Disinformation

Use these learning activities to enhance knowledge and skills related to fact-checking and disinformation.

Discussion questions

  • Have you been misled, or fooled by a piece of news or information that you found on the internet?
  • Do you often encounter news and information which is (or seems to be) false? If yes, where?
  • Do you know how to check if a news story or social media post is correct? Give some examples
  • Who do you think spreads false information, and why?
  • What is the difference between mis- and disinformation?

Media Credibility Check

This activity helps learners approach media and information with a critical eye, check sources and decide whether the information is trustworthy. This will also help them to stay safe on social media, and when they do research for school!

Goals

• Improve critical thinking and fact-checking skills.

• Analyze an item’s trustworthiness

• Become safer online.

Preparations

Pick a few stories from a news site and Facebook posts that have gone viral. If you do not have internet access in the classroom, print stories, or/and Facebook posts in advance, to hand out to the students. You can also use stories from a printed newspaper. Download the worksheet Media credibility check.

Hand out the worksheet Media credibility check, and also the stories you have prepared. Learners can work in pairs or small group

• Tell the learners to study the stories, and fill out the worksheet.

• Gather the class. Let everyone present their findings.

• Reflect together.


Toe the line

The Line activity can be used to let students learn from each other and engage in almost any topic, using different statements. Here we talk about who we trust, in the media and in general.,

Preparations

Get a bunch of papers and tape, or a long piece of string to mark the line.

Do it like this

1. Mark a line on the floor using paper, tape or a string. Ask the learners to stand on the line. Explain that one end means YES and the other means NO. They choose their position depending on how much or how little they agree with a statement.

2. Read a statement out loud and let the learners choose where to stand on the line based on how much or how little they agree. Start with a few simple statements to help the students understand the activity, like “Ice cream, is tastier than vegetables”.

3. Move on to statements about trust. Ask a few learners to motivate their choice after each statement. Perhaps their arguments will make one of the other students change their position!

4. Summarize and invite comments and reflections.

I trust…
• My parents
• My close friends
• My Facebook friends
• My Facebook friends’ friends
• My grandparents
• My teachers
• Politicians
• Celebrities
• Newspapers
• Google
• Wikipedia
• The media

Add real-life specific examples from local, national and international TV- and radio stations, newspapers, and magazines, or famous TV-hosts and news anchors, artists, celebrities, bloggers and YouTubers etc.