Stanford: Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
Date: Sun, Nov 27, 2016 at 2:56 PM
Subject: Stanford: Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News
From Real, Study Finds
To: Infowarrior List <infowarrior () attrition org>
Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>


(NB: First, before reading, we must stipulate that "fake news" is not just
"stuff you disagree with or runs contrary to one's 'beliefs'"--- and also
isn't a new phenomenon brought about by the internet in 2016 or only
impacts students. The lack of news literacy and critical thinking/analysis
in society is a problem that's been gestating for a long time prior, I
think.  After all, why *think* about things in the media when its passive
consumption, acceptance, & redistribution among one's own social network is
easier and more enjoyable?  And thus the echo chamber of fake reality is
constantly fed by its own inhabitants. -- rick)

Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds

November 23, 201612:44 PM ET
Camila Domonoske

If the children are the future, the future might be very ill-informed.

That's one implication of a new study from Stanford researchers that
evaluated students' ability to assess information sources and described the
results as "dismaying," "bleak" and "[a] threat to democracy."

As content creators and social media platforms grapple with the fake news
crisis, the study highlights the other side of the equation: What it looks
like when readers are duped.

The researchers at Stanford's Graduate School of Education have spent more
than a year evaluating how well students across the country can evaluate
online sources of information.

Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to
evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More
than 7,800 student responses were collected.

In exercise after exercise, the researchers were "shocked" — their word,
not ours — by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the
credibility of that information.

The students displayed a "stunning and dismaying consistency" in their
responses, the researchers wrote, getting duped again and again. They
weren't looking for high-level analysis of data but just a "reasonable bar"
of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups
from neutral sources and ads from articles.

< - >

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/23/503129818/study-finds-students-have-dismaying-inability-to-tell-fake-news-from-real

--
It's better to burn out than fade away.



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