Developing Information Literacy

Overview

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Goals

The goal of the project is to raise awareness about the issue of disinformation and fake news, as well as to equip students with the fact-checking skills needed to navigate the digital landscape without falling prey to this issue.

Learning Objectives

- To develop an understanding of the phenomenon of disinformation and the mechanisms of their proliferation on the Internet (particularly social media). - To develop critical thinking with regards to sharing information online and a habit of verifying information before spreading it. - To develop fact-checking skills; to learn to use existing tools and services (from search engines to dedicated services such as Snopes) in order to verify information.

Context

Online disinformation is a growing problem globally. Its consequences can range from relatively harmless to highly dangerous to society. Examples of the latter range from the influence of fake news on the US election to mob lynchings in several countries caused by false rumors being spread via WhatsApp and other messaging software. While much effort is invested into stopping the spread of fake news, a viable long-term solution to the problem is impossible without fostering information literacy and fact-checking skills in Internet users. This is the wider mission the project aims to contribute to. This project will focus on learning about and applying digital skills necessary to navigate online information, with a focus on fact-checking. It will also introduce the potentialities of AI and deep learning solutions to migitate online misinformation (see e.g. the following tutorial: https://towardsdatascience.com/full-pipeline-project-python-ai-for-detecting-fake-news-with-nlp-bbb1eec4936d)