Online disinformation poses a significant threat to society and democracy. Building resilience to disinformation among young people is an essential element in digital citizenship education. This course explains what disinformation is and how to address it with learners.
It identifies the skills and attitudes needed to evaluate the credibility of online information, and ways in which young people can be helped to develop these.The course is suitable for teachers and educators of all age-groups and takes 10 to 20 hours.
Here is a short teaser.
In this course we refrain from using the term “fake news”, because it does not help us to understand the problem or deal with it. Instead we will be focusing on one specific way in which information is misused on the internet and social media: disinformation.
Disinformation is:
intentionally false or misleading information that pretends to be true, and is deliberately spread to cause harm or manipulate people – often for political reasons.
Disinformation can take different forms: it might take the form of a news story, but it doesn’t have to. The key thing is that it is false or misleading and deliberately designed to deceive others.
In teaching about disinformation one of the first things we will want to do is to distinguish it from other types of false or misleading information that learners are likely to encounter on the internet and social media. These are often referred to as “information disorders”.
Try out a short quiz about disinformation – Give it a name, give it a place.
In the quiz the definitions of the terms have been mixed up. Unscramble these, to give each term its correct definition. Drag and drop the terms into the corresponding cell.
In this course we are focusing on disinformation. How does it differ from other types of false or misleading information? Use the following chart to show what you think. Drag and drop the term “disinformation”, placing it where you think it should go on the chart in terms of level of fabrication and intent to do harm.
The course in part of a series of online courses on digital citizenship educationdeveloped in partnership with the Council of Europe.