Teaching the Four Moves to identify Fake News: Why it Matters

When was the last time you checked social media? Does your phone give you updates from Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, every time a news story is trending? How often do you click those notifications to see what the story is, and then share it to your page, direct message it to your friends, or comment within the threads?  

Be honest. For many of us, even as academics, social media acts not only as our space for news and updates, but also as a place of networking and self-promotion. For those of us who are not as active on social media sites, other networking platforms such as Linked In act as a news source and place to comment on current events. We use social media for everything from checking in on local news to communicating with potential collaborators.  

Now, think about your average first year college student. How likely do you think it is that they check social media for news or personal testimonials on social media? According to recent studies, 48% of people ages 18 to 29 and 40% of people ages 30-49, “get political news from social media.” This study also states that those who “depend on social media for political news have lower political knowledge than most other groups.” (https://www.journalism.org/2020/07/30/americans-who-mainly-get-their-news-on-social-media-are-less-engaged-less-knowledgeable/ ) If a large population of people are getting their political news from social media, it is not unlikely that they also follow a wide variety of other news through social media sources. 

So, it isn’t unusual for any of us to get information from our morning tweet scrolling, and honestly we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that what our great aunt Bertha reposted on Facebook about vampires and werewolves might not be true. But what we should consider is that more frequently, news is being altered and curtailed to look credible.  

We as educators want to equip our students to assess the information that they are encountering (and potentially relying on) each and every day. We have been teaching a class that we like to call “Fake News,” or “Disinformation Literacy,” as part of the UTA Libraries effort to  help students interact with their education in a meaningful way. This class focuses on teaching students four moves that will help them evaluate the validity and accuracy of sources that they encounter when doing research and when scrolling through their news feeds.  

1. Check for previous fact-checking work. Checking sites such as Snopes or PolitiFact could save students a lot of time, as someone else may have already done the work of investigating the story. 

2.  Go upstream to the source. See if you can find the research or report that your story is using to back up its claims. Checking academic databases, such as Academic Search Complete and Google Scholar is a great way to find original research. 

3. Read laterally. What information can you locate about the story. Who published it, and are they reputable? We recommend investigating the source of the information, using sites such as Media Bias/Fact Check to discover what biases your source may hold. 

4. Circle back. Do you still have questions? Repeat the steps if needed. 

When we teach students to work through these moves, we generally compare two stories. The first is a news article stating that mountain lions fear the sound of human voices. The headline mentions the voices of two polarizing political figures, which raises a red flag for most readers. No previous fact checking has been done on this research, so we encourage students to look upstream to the source. A quick search in Academic Search Complete confirms that this study was conducted by UC Santa Cruz, as the article states. The research backs up what the story claims. We then have students investigate the source of the article, United Press International (UPI). Media Bias/Fact Check rates UPI as a "least biased" news source. This article serves as an opportunity for students to discern that even though the story is accurate, the political figures mentioned in the title elicit an emotional response.  

The second news story we evaluate with the students is one that discusses whether wind turbines cause cancer. Like the previous story, the headline makes a polarizing statement: “Is President Donald Trump crazy?” The article asserts that the president may not be wrong, though his wording inaccurate – that cancer can be a result of the lack of sleep caused by the wind turbines. Snopes reveals that there are multiple articles that dispute the assertion that wind turbines cause cancer, including one that cites the American Cancer Society, but there is not one that specifically addresses this article – one about the indirect health effects of wind turbines. These fact-checking articles are useful, but there is further investigation to be done. 

Next we encourage students to look for the original research the story uses to justify their stance. In this story, there is no research mentioned, though there are some anecdotes cited from government documents. Finally, we ask students to evaluate the source that published this story, the Center of the American Experiment. This source is not listed on Media Bias/Fact Check, but an internet search reveals that it does lean toward one end of the political spectrum. At this point, we remind students that we all have biases, but that it is important to take these biases into consideration as responsible users of information. 

These two articles work especially well for helping students learn how to evaluate sources for a few reasons. Firstly, the websites that they come from can look misleading. Secondly, the ways that the content of each article is presented can also seem confusing for the reader.  

I think that when we click on news articles or other tabloid sites, our first instinct is to look at how a website is set up in order to assess how credible it might be. The first article about mountain lions and celebrity voices comes from UPI, and the article page is littered with ads. I counted, and on my page there were at least 6, not counting the one that popped up and I could close at the bottom of the screen. The article page on UPI also hosts a variety of suggested articles, sponsored articles, and top stories for readers to click on, with topics ranging from, “Iowa woman has deceased pet cat cloned” to, “These Two Twins Were Named ‘Most Beautiful in the World,’ See them Today.”  

If I were an unknowing reader, I might discredit the content of the article just based on how this website looks. It feels click-bait-y. And I know we have always been told not to judge a book by its cover, but let’s be honest, this cover is spooky.  

Looking at the content, this article does have good sources that it’s citing, the truth of this information is somewhat parodied by purposefully emphasizing a certain aspect of it, by suggesting that the mountain lions are specifically frightened of the voices of American politicians, and not just of human voices in general. 

 Don’t you think it would be hard for any reader, not just a student, to encounter this article and website at first glance, and ascertain its credibility without doing extra research?  

Now, let’s take a look at the website that the second article comes from. Just at first glance, the second article comes from a website with a much neater layout. It’s website title, “Center of the American Experiment,” is listed in an all capped Times New Roman-esque font at the top, behind 3 red waves that allude to the American flag. The page itself has no ads (aside from internal ones), and no suggestions for hair-raising clickable articles that might lead you to learning this one food can turn you into a zombie. In fact, the only other clickable links on the page are those that lead to their social media pages, links to different categories of other articles that their website houses, and a place for you to subscribe (to what I assume to be their newsletter) by entering your email. Just at first glance, this website seems much more credible.  

The content of the article from the American Experiment is filled with misleading and circumstantial information, made to lead the reader through a maze of personal opinions and false analogies in order to hide the lack of valid evidence. 

When we lead the students through the four moves, we are showing them how to not only discern if the information in the articles they are reading is correct, but also how to determine if the websites that they come from are biased. Whether the articles elicit a certain kind of reaction from the readers or not doesn't matter to this exercise, what matters is understanding the information being presented and knowing how to prove or disprove what’s being said. By teaching students the four moves to evaluate sources, we are preparing our students not only to do good research, but how to be good stewards of information.  

Laura Haygood is an Experiential Learning Librarian and Alessia Cavazos is a Library Specialist in Community and Outreach—but both are passionate about teaching. Laura and Alessia co-authored this blog post.