Biased articles and false data have been around forever. However, U.S. election and COVID-19 news coverage plus the proliferation of AI-generated media and memes have increased awareness of misinformation and conspiracy theories on the internet.
I’ve worked on internet literacy content for over 20 years. I’m alarmed at the dangerous misinformation and disinformation continually shared on social media without any sort of fact verification (or minimal and questionable at best). The need for internet literacy to be taught as a basic life skill is more important now than ever before. Evaluating websites is a critical skill under the umbrella of information literacy.
The following work sample is from a tutorial on website evaluation.
Sample
Purpose of Instruction: Because users are bombarded by constant information overload from ads, videos, news feeds, and social media posts, the ability to distinguish relevant, verifiable information from biased and inaccurate memes, comments, and unresearched articles is one of the most important school and workplace skills today. Given certain criteria, adults can evaluate websites to find ones that will be useful for their purposes. Along with lessons and self-checks, I created a checklist of criteria for evaluating website content.