Our Media Environment 3 — Fake News Bluff
In this game, students work in groups to prepare two news items about the same developing story. While one is an objective rundown of the events, the other contains fake and misleading information.
Lesson goals
- Critical thinking
- Writing skills
Activities
Exercise (30 minutes) - Class divided into groups
Teacher sets up the exercise. Students work on their news bits and present one of the versions to the class.
Aim: through a game, students gain an insight into false and misleading news and realise it can be non-obvious.
Discussion (15 minutes) - Class
Teacher moderates the discussion on the perils and ubiquity of false and misleading news, as well as the students’ habits pertaining to fact-checking and following up on what they read or see in the news.
Aim: students reflect on the impact of false and misleading information in media.
Pedagogical tips and recommendations
- This exercise requires basic knowledge on how a news article or segment is usually composed.
Exercise (30 minutes)
The set up - 5 minutes
The students are divided into groups (up to 4 students per group). You can either give the groups a couple of minutes to pick a news story they would like to cover (one per group) or assign topics to groups yourself. The topic can be related to a particular subject area or unit. In all cases, the topic must represent a real event or news story. The students are encouraged to use the internet for research on the topic.
Once each group has a topic, groups are tasked with developing two different news items (a news article or a mock segment for the TV news). One news item should contain only verified information and disclose any speculation or predictions. The other should contain false and/or misleading information and, in principle, constitute a fake news item.
Each group will have to present either the “fake news” or the “real news” news item they prepared, but they won’t know which one until right before their presentation. After the presentation, the rest of the class votes on whether the presentation was “real” or “fake.” This means both of their news items need to be convincing - flagrant fake news might be easily spotted, and the game lost.
The preparation - 15 minutes
Students have 15 minutes total to work on their two news items as described. The teacher can either assign and let them choose whether they want to work on news articles (i.e., written news) or act out a TV news segment. Remind them that both results must be convincing - some fake news is hard to spot, but the more dangerous kind slips under our radars.
The vote - 10 minutes
Each group has 90 seconds to present one of their news items, but which one? The teacher either flips a coin or lets whoever is presenting draw a paper slip from a pile containing the same number of “false” and “real” slips.
After the presentation, the rest of the class votes on whether the presentation was “real” or “false.” Students vote in groups, not individually. The teacher tallies up the votes, with each group who guessed correctly getting one point per guess.
Discussion (15 minutes)
- Which were the most sneaky and which the most obvious falsehoods or misleading elements you noticed or managed to get away with?
- What was your strategy to make your “fake news” more convincing? How did you, as a group, decide which ideas were sneaky enough and which were too obvious to include?
- When you read a news article, how often do you follow up on the information provided there? Do you ever fact-check?