1 Building Our Foundations

WEEK 1

Let’s begin our training by looking at our organizing documents, gaining some shared understanding of terms that are important to our work, and exploring the idea of inoculating our community against disinformation. There are 4 parts in this module. It’s estimated you will need up to 6 hours to complete all of the assignments.

Part 1 of 4: Project Expectations and Objectives

Objectives:

1. Begin building our team culture through our Shared Expectations and a reflection on our own intentions for the project
2. Understand the overall project and our part in meeting project objectives in order to be able to explain the project to others.
3. Contribute to planning how we will meet project objectives.

Activities: 

1. (15 min.) Review the Shared Expectations document, then submit your electronic signature and date to acknowledge receipt and review. We will talk about these Shared Expectations in our first lab meeting. Contact me if you have questions or concerns that you would like to discuss privately.
2. (45 min.) This project is funded as part of Homeland Security’s Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program. Scan the grant proposal, paying particular attention to the highlighted sections in Program Goals and Program Objectives, which are ours. We are the Media Literacy Reference Desk referred to in the proposal, but now refer to ourselves as the Disinfo Squad to reflect the more proactive nature of our work. After scanning this overview of the project respond to the following questions:

• • • What questions do you have about the project as described in the proposal?
    • What do you hope to get out of participation in this project?
    • What ideas do you have that might help us achieve the project objectives?

Part 2 of 4: Identifying Misinformation

Objectives:

1. Investigate how educators are training learners to identify misinformation
2. Identify how misinformation is eroding our society and increasing divisions
3. Consider if and how resources might be integrated into our own work

Activities:

1. (1 hour, 30 minutes) Register for our Disinfo Squad course in Checkology:
   https://checkology.org/student-signup. Then complete the first 3 modules in our Disinfo Squad course there: Misinfo, MisinfoQuest: Weather, and MisinfoChallenge 101: Fact Checking.

When you’ve completed the 3 modules, respond to the following questions:

• • • What were your key takeaways from this series of exercises?
    • How important do you think it is to provide people with a sense of the “broader landscape of information”?
    • How effective do you think these exercises are in doing that? Provide specific examples.

2. (1 hour) Go to the Disinformation Debunking Station. Review the information provided on the What is it? page and then respond to the questions below.

• • • How does the information provided on this page compare to the information in the Checkology modules?
    • Why might it be important to help people understand the effects of dis/misinformation?
    • Do a search to find a resource that might improve the page. Provide a link to the resource and your reasoning for including it.

Part 3 of 4: Prebunking & Inoculating Against Disinformation

Objectives:

1. Investigate the idea of “prebunking” in relation to fighting disinformation..
2. Consider these concepts in relation to our work as media literacy educators and influencers, and as potential topics for your future research.

Activities:

1. (90 minutes) Read the following articles, then respond to the questions after each article citation.

Garcia, L., & Shane, T. (29 Jun 2021). A guide to prebunking. First Draft.

• • • What are Garcia and Shane’s key points?
    • How might we use them in our media literacy efforts?

Basol, M., Roozenbeek, J., & Van der Linden, S. (2020). Good news about bad news: Gamified inoculation boosts confidence and cognitive immunity against fake news. Journal of Cognition, 3(1).

• • • How would you describe the experiment in this article?
    • What are the differences and similarities between this article and A Guide to Prebunking?
    • What ideas from these articles are useful to you? How do you see us putting them into play in our media literacy efforts?

Part 4 of 4: How to Write for Social Media

Objective: Prepare to write social media posts related to the concepts we’re learning.

Activity: 

1. (60 minutes). Read the article, How to Write the Most Engaging Social Media Posts, then respond to the questions below.

• • • We’re going to be creating posts for Instagram and Facebook. What are the most important things to keep in mind when creating content for those social media outlets according to the article?
    • Look at Albertsons Library’s Instagram account. What strikes you about the posts you see there?
    • What might be the greatest challenge in creating posts related to the concepts we’ll be learning about?