‘Fake news’ has been on the rise since 2016 when the term first entered the mainstream to describe news that deliberately aims to mislead, misinform and deceive the reader. To address this in the adult education community, EPALE has promoted key themes; September 2018’s theme on the platform was Media Literacy, which led to the publishing of a number of blogs and resources from across Europe on the platform for you to use, as summarised here; the current key theme is Citizenship Education in Adult Learning and part of this is ensuring that people can exercise judgement, critical faculty and be critically aware.

The importance of ensuing that our citizens can differentiate between fact and fiction has never been more significant with 1 in 4 Britons distrusting news on Social Media according to the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer report with this trend continuing into 2019 with a general distrust in journalists and a sustained concern about fake news. This blog therefore aims to highlight the dangers of fake news, actions being taken to combat this phenomenon and to identify resources to help your learners navigate through potential ‘fake news’.

                                

The dangers of fake news

In order to understand the dangers, it’s important to understand the motivations behind those intentionally or unintentionally publishing and propagating fake news and the types of fake news that you or your learners might fall victim to:

• Fake news can carry alarmist or sensationalist titles to draw people in to drive traffic to their websites. This is called ‘clickbait’ and can be a very profitable business for online publishers through advert revenues. Users should also be aware of potential risks of accessing such news sites, as they could be visiting a site that contains a virus.
• Findings of a study published in Science Magazine in March 2018 showed that twitter is plagued with fake news and fake news is disseminated much faster than the truth. The study confirmed that untruths were 70% more likely to be retweeted than real news. Furthermore, the top 1 percent of fake news reached between 1,000 and 100,000 people (while the truth rarely reached more than 1,000 people).

• Fake news can be used as a tool to further political agendas and has been found to be a threat to democracy and society. In June 2018, the Literacy Trust warned that fake news had the power to "impact on democracy through influencing voter behaviours” and the study (above) certainly supported this with findings that fake news on the topic of politics was the most propagated topic above all others. Concerns of this have been raised in relation to the US elections of 2016, for example. 

• It can be used to influence other views too; by searching online, liking and commenting on news and stories online that align with your beliefs and viewpoint, you can be vulnerable to algorithms used by social media sites that source
  
  and highlight other content to you that is similar and thinks you will like. This can trap you in a ‘social media bubble’, where you only read similar content, thus isolating you from other points of view. This leaves you vulnerable to fake news based on your biases.
• A further troubling use of fake news is to influence and groom vulnerable people for exploitation.
• Satirical content for comedy value can be spread across the internet as fact. An example of a website which published fake stories for entertainment is the Daily Mash. Do you remember the the BBC’s 2008 April Fool’s Day film trailer hoax showing penguins flying? Read here for more funny fake news created for April Fool’s day.

                                  

How can we combat dangerous fake news?

The first line of defence against fake news must be to promote sensible use of the Internet through building socially and digitally-responsible citizens. We need to educate and inform our citizens on how to apply critical thinking skills to scrutinise what they hear and read. This is a key life skill that citizens can use, in all parts of their daily life, throughout their lifetime.

There are a number of resources freely available online that can be used to educate citizens of all ages, such as:

• The Duke of York iDEA Programme – this free online resource has a Citizenship badge that takes learners through topics on ‘Fake news’ with activities on identifying fake news. Other topics under this badge include ‘Social Media ethics’, ‘Staying Safe on the Internet’ and ‘Digital Ethics’.

• The National Literacy Trust publish resources on ‘fake news’ aimed at children and young people, however some of these resources can be used in an adult education setting, such as a poster on ‘How to Spot Fake News’.

• Library services also hold many materials on the topic, such as the teacher and student resources as well as scholarly articles on fake news on the Bucks County Community College website here.

• There are a number of fact checking sites available now too where you can go to find reliable news, such as Snopes, BBC Reality Check, Channel 4 Fact Check, FactCheck.org and Politifact.

                        

What is happening in the UK?

The whirlwind of fake news over the past 4 years has incited governments, journalists and social media platforms to take action to try to combat fake news across the globe. In the UK, the All-party Parliamentary Group created a Commission on Fake News and Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills in September 2017. The National Literacy Trust, as mentioned above, hold resources created thanks to the findings and recommendations of this Commission.

More recently, the final report on “Disinformation and fake news” from the DCMS Commission has published recommendations on 19 February 2019, namely calling for a compulsory Code of Ethics for tech companies overseen by independent regulator and for social media companies to remove proven sources of disinformation. Read the summary here.

On a similar note, Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock, has raised concerns this March, on misinformation in social media about vaccinations, which is suspected of attributing to a decrease in people having vaccinations and has called for legislation for social media companies to have a duty of care in respect of misinformation as well as promotion of harmful acts, such as suicide and terrorism. Any proposed legislation aiming to reduce the impact of fake news, however, must be very careful not to infringe on rights or freedom of speech.

It is positive that conversations are taking place with social media companies to try to tackle fake news. For example, Facebook have responded to Matt Hancock stating that they are making efforts to restrict misinformation on vaccinations, and Whatsapp have reportedly started to restrict the amount of message sharing in January 2019 – an initiative that was enforced in India last year.

                         

Are you integrating Citizenship Education into your adult learning? Share your resources and methods through a blog or post a comment in the box below!

                             

You may also be interested in:

Preparing learners for the British citizenship test - IELTS and language skills (blog)

How to develop the concept of European citizenship, a European identity, a common sense of belonging? (blog)

Digital literacy for free (blog)

Collecting Europe - Identity (Resource)

e-Inventory on Discrimination Faced by Minorities in Europe (Resource)