ACTIVITY INTRODUCTION

Objectives:

– Allow participants to apply the journalistic practice of fact checking.

– Assess a piece of information’s quality and relevance.

– Reflect on the difficulty of getting clear information on certain topics.

Participants are seated in groups in front of computers and given news items to check. It may be necessary to prepare a few topics in advance to figure out whether or not the information is true, but the objective really is to let them find out for themselves.

Many different types of facts can be checked, ranging from the simplest – the date of an event, the content of a law, or what happened during a football match – to the most complex. For example, finding out the number of unemployed in Kosovo requires deciding on how to define ‘unemployed’, which varies by agency.

The aim of this activity is to put participants into the role of ‘investigator’ or ‘junior journalist’ and encourage them to exercise caution in their everyday use of the internet.

ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS

1 – The instructor compiles ten or so items (depending on the number of participants) found on the internet or social media that are either fake news (debunked after publication) or real news that is easy to verify. The instructor must check the items beforehand and have an answer key.

2 – Participants, in groups of 2 or 3, draw 2 or 3 items at random.

3 – The groups of participants sit at computers and are given multiple items to check.

4 – Students should be reminded of how to fact-check:

• What kind of website was this item found on? (see the ‘Legal Notices’ or the ‘About’ section)
• Is it an international news site, a humour site, a political blog?
• Who is the author? A politician, journalist, expert, citizen, anonymous author? (Look up the person who wrote the article)
• What is the author’s intent?
• Is the author trying to scare us, inform us, manipulate us, persuade us?
• Where does the article come from and what sources/evidence does it use?
• When was it published?
• Was the information published on other sites?
• Can you corroborate it, that is, can you find it in other media?

5 – Each group presents how they checked the items, other groups give their impression on that group’s performance, the instructor provides corrections.

ACTIVITY INTRODUCTION

In this role-play of the information cycle, participants play the parts of the different figures that help create the news:

• news subjects, witnesses, reporters, newswriters, and presenters/crew.

The aim is to show students the inherent difficulties of faithfully and objectively reporting an event, especially when relying on eyewitnesses.

Objectives:

– Help students to understand, establish, and identify the people involved in the information cycle. – Put students in the role of members of the media (role-play)

First, divide participants into 5 groups. Each group will have a role to play in the information cycle, consisting of the steps listed in the information cycle section in lesson sheet 3.

This activity will be most effective if the groups have no contact with one another before the activity stipulates that they should interact (ideally, you should make participants leave the room and come back in one group at a time).

ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS

1. In the first step, the first group makes up an event of public interest, such as a car accident involving a politician, a strike by workers whose factory has been shut down, or a celebrity arrest (choose a famous actor or singer). After conferring amongst themselves away from the other groups, the first group stages/recreates/draws the event for the second group only.

2. The second group, playing the role of witnesses, are the only ones to see the event staged by the first group. The second group alerts the media.

3. The third group are the reporters, who then enter the scene. They listen to the witnesses’ testimony (group 2) and check the facts by using ‘5W’ questions to corroborate the witnesses’ statements. (The ‘5Ws’ are Who? What? Where? When? and Why?)

4. The fourth group are the news writers (who have been sequestered from the beginning). They collect the interview write-ups and write a newsbrief – that is, a short article that summarises the event by answering the ‘5Ws’.

5. The news brief is sent to the members of the fifth group (presenters and crew), who announce the news item as it was reported to them in an audio or video recording or, for example, in a simulated television news programme.

   The four groups that passed on the information (from the witnesses to the broadcast team) have the delicate task of conveying information as completely and neutrally as possible. It might, however, be interesting to sabotage the activity by, for example, asking one of the witnesses in group 2 to lie about what they saw or to invent a conspiracy theory about the event.

6. A brief follow-up to the activity is a chance to ask the following questions:
   – Was the information passed on accurately? Did the last group’s report closely resemble the actual facts?
   – What are the inherent difficulties of each step/role?
   – What helps or hinders each group when it comes to dealing with information? What can they do?

INTRODUCTION

It may sometimes be useful, for example, at the start of a workshop session, to ask participants to recall a recent news item or event that made an impression on them in order to discuss it as a group.

Starting a session with a press review is a good practical exercise of the objectives of this workshop because it uses tangible, topical examples and has numerous benefits.

Benefits of this activity:

– Encourages discussion and active participation in the workshop. Students are invited to voice their opinions current events, which bolsters participation and involvement.

– Uses the news to consolidate and apply theoretical concepts that students have already learned (reviews the definition of information, the difference between information and opinion, the need for caution regarding news sources, and the natural tendency to prefer information that is sensational and/or familiar).

– Provides insight into young people’s media habits and their relationship with information. It has been observed that social media are often their primary source of information (SnapChat and Instagram are commonly cited). This activity is a chance to encourage them to look into other sources of information that present the news differently and more in-depth, such as fact-checking sites that they can follow on social media.

ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS

1. Students spend five minutes on their smartphones searching for a news item or event that has made an impression on them.
2. Each student presents their item to the group.
3. The student cites the news source. (Where did he or she first see this item?)
4. The student explains why it is interesting to him or her.
5. The instructor provides additional context.

ACTIVITY INTRODUCTION

In this word cloud activity, the word ‘media’ is written on the board. Students are asked to work as a group to reveal what they know about the world of media and combine their knowledge.

The activity is also a chance to present the major players of Balkan media in a clear and organised fashion while pointing out how they differ.

This activity is also a chance for instructors to take note of the media habits of the target audience (What kind of media do they use? Where do they get their news?) and tailor the workshop to their habits and preferences. Students should be encouraged to provide details or support for their responses and to give their opinions to further discussion on certain topics.

ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS

1. Write the word ‘media’ on a visual aid and jot down the names of media outlets or types (television, radio, written press, social media) that participants come up with.
2. Categorise the media outlets participants suggest by their type.
3. Identify which media are public and private.
4. Separate traditional media from social media. Most participants will be frequent users of social media (Instagram/Snapchat/Facebook) either to deliberately look for news or just to pass the time. For this reason, the question of social media’s place in the media landscape will either be brought up spontaneously by participants or by the instructor. This is a good time to introduce themes of democratisation of information on the internet and the potential for manipulation brought about by social networks. In addition, students should be reminded that social networks do not have any editors or journalists; instead of the professionals, we are the ones producing and spreading information. Caution is therefore to be encouraged since anyone and everyone can have their voice heard on social media.

PRODUCING A NEWS PROGRAMME

Resources: Before you start working on the news programme, you must choose a (user-friendly) camera or decide to use the team members’ smartphones. You will also need editing software (see links below) and to teach your students the basics of video editing. Then, you need to choose at least one publishing platform, such as YouTube or social media.

Time requirement: Producing a news programme in a group may require multiple half-days of individual and group work.

1. Choosing topics:

The first step is to hold a meeting of the editorial board to pick the name of the programme, the topics to be covered, the formats (report, interview, debate, newsflash), and the angles.

1. Assigning roles:

This is also a good time to assign the roles of ‘journalist(s)’, ‘expert(s)’, ‘presenter(s)’, and ‘crew’ (camera operator and editor) to answer the following questions: Who is in charge of what? What does each person need to do to prepare? (research, coming up with questions, reporting, commentary)?

1. Cue sheet and script:

Next, you need to come up with a cue sheet – a minute-by-minute breakdown of the show – and help the presenters write their script (everything should be scripted: opening, introduction of topics/journalists, segment closers, transitions, closing, acknowledgements) and rehearse on set so that they do not look down at the script too much.

1. Filming:

The programme should be pre-recorded rather than live. Segments should be filmed individually to avoid noise from chairs and movements as well as to keep the rhythm.

For example: Opening and introduction / topic 1 / conclusion and introduction / topic 2 / conclusion / interview intro / interview / conclusion introduction / topic 3 / programme close/ acknowledgements.

The background should be neutral or specially chosen. Make sure there is enough light and a suitable fixed frame.

1. Editing:

Next, put all the segments in order to make it seem like it is live (or to make everything flow). Make sure you follow the cue sheet you made using software.

1. Posting:

Finally, share the programme, for example on YouTube, and also post it to social media or your intranet making sure to give it tags, link it to other content, and that it already has a visual identity (logo and title). Add a short description so users will want to watch it.

MAKING A SHORT FILM, DOCUMENTARY, OR NEWS REPORT

Video production comprises various formats including:

• Short films (a short, scripted story)
• Documentaries (an investigation-style video that covers multiple aspects of an issue)
• News reports (a video that covers one specific topic from a unique angle)

Resources: To make a video, you do not necessarily need professional equipment. A digital camera, smartphone, or tablet may suffice.

Time requirement: Making a short film in a group may require multiple half-days of individual and group work. You can save time by filming the video in one long take to avoid having to do any editing.

1. Choosing a subject

Before starting working on the film itself, it is a good idea to familiarise students with the subject they have chosen by providing them with a variety of educational materials in order to create an environment that is conducive to starting a dialogue on the subject. You and your students can then discuss the different possible approaches, explore and use existing resources, and come up with a message.

Once you have your message, it is helpful to write, as a team, a short (one-page) summary of what happens in your film. This is the synopsis; it follows the narrative structure and specifies the ending.

Format:

• Format: A maximum two-minute film must be concise and effective. You will need to choose a format: info-clip, advertisement, sketch, trailer, narrative, news report
• Screenplay: The screenplay should be extremely detailed to make filming go fast. The story is then broken down into narrative sequences and each sequence into shots to create a storyboard.

Before filming:

• You need to find locations (scouting) and sets, text, dialogue, costumes, and props.
• The team also needs role assignments: camera operator, editor, scriptwriter, director, sound engineer (sound recording and music), and actors.

Your team will also need to agree on techniques:

• Visual techniques: standard film (actors acting out scenes), stop-motion animation (modelling clay, Lego, Playmobil, photo cut-outs, etc.), pixilation (photography of images), slideshow with sound and narration.
• Audio techniques: live recording while filming, dubbing (re-recording voices), soundtrack (voiceover, commentary, music).

Before filming, you will need to get authorisation to use the sound and video recordings.

For easier editing, you can start each take with a clapper that says the scene number or name and take number.

1. During filming you will need to select the most interesting shots and save all of the shots on a computer or memory card.
2. Editing comprises multiple steps:

• Importing video and sound files, editing sound and video, adding any effects, music (free of copyright), subtitles (if necessary), and opening and closing credits.
• Then, it is time to export the final edit for viewing. You can choose to show the final edit in any way you wish (online, video projection, television, etc.).

PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES

You can use this lesson sheet as a basis for organising a video production activity with young people.

INTRODUCTION

Creating a magazine helps students gain basic knowledge while developing skills (critical thinking, teamwork) and building character (encouraging curiosity, perseverance).

CREATING AN ONLINE MAGAZINE STEP-BY-STEP

1. Getting started

The first task is to put together a team of very motivated individuals that will bring the project to life and see it through.

This will be the editorial ‘core’ who will be in charge of

• and writing articles
• Taking/finding photos and videos for the magazine
• Finding interview subjects, interviewing them, and writing up the interviews
• Publishing the magazine on social media

The most effective way to do this is to organise regular meetings of the editorial board so that everyone knows their role in producing the magazine based on their preferences and abilities.

2. Coming up with a format and identity

• Ask what the aim of the magazine is: Do students want to actively shape the life of their school or club? Allow as many young people as possible to express themselves? Encourage their own discussions on a particular topic?
• Set your target audience: Students in a school? Members of a club? An entire community?
• Ask what the editorial line should be: Keeping your target audience in mind, try to summarise the magazine’s ethos in a few lines: its mission, preferred topics, tone (serious, lighthearted, humorous), type of content, and how it will be covered.
• Choose a title for your magazine that will set it apart, affirm its identity, and (literally) make a name for it.
• Finally, you need to take stock of the resources you need for your magazine and desired publication frequency. The number of team members, their commitment, and their availability are major factors as well as your available equipment.

3. Choosing content

To maintain the interest of your audience, draw them in, and pique their curiosity, you need to be sure that you supply information in a variety of ways.

Here are the main genres of journalism available to you:

Reports, investigations, interview pieces, editorials, reviews, summaries, portrait pieces.

Pick an angle for every topic

To avoid ending up with an article that is too long, convoluted, and difficult to read, you need to pick an angle, or point of view. You need to pick out which of the topic’s aspects you want to highlight and which ones your do not.

Example: The opening of a new cinema is a topic.

The effects on local tourism from the new cinema is an angle.

4. Assigning roles

In a newsroom, people do not all do the same job. The Madmagz model suggests dividing the team into three groups:

• one editor-in-chief (in Madmagz: ‘super chief redactor’)
• editors (in Madmagz: ‘chief redactor’)
• writers (in Madmagz: ‘redactors’)

(See appendix to sheet 17). You can adjust these roles if you do not wish to follow the Madmagz model.

In order to write an article, every writer needs to remember to ask the six essential questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?

People must also agree on the length of the article and the level of language of the magazine before writing begins (not to formal or informal).

Other roles you might want include:

• Illustrator: An illustrator draws pictures, takes or uploads photos or other images, sounds, and graphics (either free from copyright or with the source cited) to illustrate the magazine.
• Community manager: A community manager looks for ways of linking the content created by the writers to other sites. They are also in charge of social media and promote the magazine to maximise its audience by focusing on additional enhancing features for the articles such as the headlines, ledes, photos, and snippets to show up in search engines.

5. Publishing the magazine

Once the magazine is ready, you can to publish it online or in print (see appendix to sheet 17) depending on your preferences, aims, and target audience.

MADMAGZ

You can use the application Madmagz to create your online magazine. Its interface is set up for working in teams and makes formatting and adding graphics easy.

Madmagz (https://madmagz.com/) is an app that helps you create a magazine or newspaper simply and as a team. It is highly customisable with options to create all types of publications (school newspaper, conventional newspaper, newsletter, etc.). Your only limit is your imagination!

Madmagz allows its users to work collaboratively to create an online magazine that, once finished, can be made into a print magazine.

The platforms tools help you to do the following:

• Choose the right magazine template for your content
• Create page categories (covers, table of contents, editorial, article, etc.)
• Write and proofread articles with hierarchical collaboration functions
• Add, modify, edit, and delete pages
• Choose formatting options
• Add photos, sounds, videos, and links to other websites
• Publish your magazine online or in print once you have proofed all of the content.

These steps are all explained in detail in the appendix to sheet 17

PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES

• You can use this lesson sheet as a basis for creating a magazine or newspaper with young people.
• See also the appendix to sheet 17 for more information on Madmagz

THE PATH TO PRODUCING A TRUE PODCAST

Podcasts and radio programmes

A podcast differs from a radio programme in that it is made solely for posting online online and not on the radio.

Note: Recordings of radio programmes that are posted online after airing are often referred to as ‘podcasts’. These are not to be confused with true podcasts, which are not intended for broadcast on the air.

Features of a true podcast

Unlike radio programmes, true podcasts have no time limit and can cover a very large variety of topics (general interest or niche subjects). Producers therefore have more editorial freedom and can tailor their content to their desired audience. A podcast can have an unlimited number of episodes and be divided either thematically or chronologically into seasons.

Producers looking to build a following should consider the importance of a regular programming schedule and branding through images and sound – with emphasis on sound quality. In addition, since podcasts are published online, it is essential that you post it to as many platforms as possible and promote it online, especially on social media.

Choosing a theme

• The editorial meeting is the first step to choosing the theme of your podcast with the entire team
• You theme can be:
• Very simple, such as ‘Life at your local library’
• Broad but not necessarily easy to tackle, such as ‘What does it mean to be a teenager today?’
• More in-depth, such as ‘The FIFA World Cup’ or ‘Sexism’.
• Participants also need to decide on a podcast name.

You also need to decide on:

• Episode length (for example, 20 minutes)
• Everybody’s role assignments (presenter, reporter, specialist, etc.)
• The content of each programme segment (reports, debate, interview, etc.)
• The minute-by-minute breakdown, or ‘cue sheet’, of the episode

Types of podcast content: Your podcast can take the form of an interview, debate, report, or a combination of the three.

• Interview techniques:
• Participants should find an interviewee to contact based on the chosen topic.
• The interviewer leads the discussion. They should follow their prepared list of questions which in turn should follow a logical progression.
• This requires a great deal of research beforehand. The questions need to be specific.
• The interviewer should know how to ask follow-ups and when and if to stray from their prepared questions.
• Preparing a debate
• The aim of a debate is to talk about a particular topic that requires a variety of viewpoints because it is either complex or controversial.

The moderator has a special role:

• They lead the roundtable by asking specific questions about the topic and choosing who can speak. They need to make sure everyone’s speaking time is respected.

Some panellists will play the role of an expert:

• Each one should have a specific role (sociologist, parent of a student, etc.)
• The experts each prepare their arguments.
• Together, they narrow the topic down by discussing their ideas and helping the moderator come up with questions.
• At the end of this step, the panellists will have plotted out their debate and will be ready to record!
• Reports: A reporter goes to the scene in search of information. Reporters are therefore journalists that cover current events and convey them to listeners.

Before going to the scene, reporters must:

• Read up on the topic
• Get their equipment ready
• Choose contact persons
• Document which information they want to collect

Once they are on the scene, they must:

• Look for good interview subjects
• Be able to introduce themselves
• Ask the right questions, observe, take note.
• Record an interview, get the ‘feel’ of the scene, take sound recordings.

Recording off the air

Outdoor interviews and sound clips:

• Reporters should have a smartphone or, if possible, a microphone.
• Use the ‘record’ function (‘Rec’, ‘Stop’, and ‘Save’ buttons) to record questions and, subsequently, the interviewee’s answers, ensuring that the environment is not too noisy.
• When recording background noise, such as the sound of a crowd of protestors, it is enough to simply hold the smartphone or microphone toward the crowd.

Derushing

• After the files have been recorded, the reporter can derush them by extracting them off of their phone and sending them in an email to him- or herself email or saving them to a USB thumb drive.

Note: For security reasons, sound recordings should also be sent to the teacher before they are deleted from the smartphone or microphone.

• The files are then uploaded to a computer equipped with sound-editing software such as Audacity (www.audacity.sourceforge.net) or Netia.
• Tutorials are available on how to install the software and how to do sound editing (https://manual.audacityteam.org/index.html)
• It is up to you to teach your students some of the (really quite simple!) techniques to add and edit sound to create an audio report.

Recording the programme

Team members take turns sitting around a small table.

A smartphone with a microphone records in the centre of the table

To avoid noises from chairs and people coming in and out, and to maintain the programme’s rhythm, it is a good idea to record each segment of the programme separately.

For example:

• Opening by the host
• Editorial
• Presenting the topic
• Interviews
• Acknowledgements, closing

Note: If you are including a report, it should be added to the final edit.

Editing recordings and posting the podcast

• The instructor is responsible for piecing together the sound clips into an episode and adding jingles (musical extracts less than 5 seconds long) to make the segments flow together and fill gaps.
• Then, the podcast should be published on a free-to-use platform like Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/discover) along with a short description (topic, format, producers, originality).
• Afterwards, you can organise a group listening session.

Note: You can streamline the process by sticking to just one format (interview, debate, report).

FAKE NEWS FACTORY

Fake News Factory was created to raise students’ awareness of the risks of fake news and conspiracy theories in the media, especially in online media.

The programme was designed to allow young people to take part in a roleplay where some play conspiracy theorists and others play journalists. The intent is to drive home the main theoretical ideas around these issues.

The programme comprises the following steps:

Assigning everyone a role:

• Journalists and conspiracy theorists (in equal numbers)
• Host
• Expert
• Sound editor, who records the show and passes around the microphone
• Editor

Conspiracy theorists

• Using the structure and mechanisms of conspiracy theories mentioned in the lesson sheets for session 3 (‘Information and Disinformation’), the conspiracists must come up with their own conspiracy theory on the chosen topic (or use an existing one).
• Once the theory is in place, the conspiracists reveal it to the journalists.

Journalists

• The journalists then do thorough research in line with the fundamental rules of journalism listed in the lesson sheets for session 3: verification, comparison, corroboration.
• Afterwards, the journalists respond to and deconstruct the conspiracy theory point by point.

Expert

• Choose a student to play an expert specialising in conspiracy theories and fake news to give tips on how to identify false information.

Recording

• To record sound, you can use a microphone and save the file to a sound card or use a smartphone. Then use software for editing (Audacity or Netia).
• The episode should be plotted in advance with everyone’s lines having been written beforehand.

Plotting the episode

PART 1

• The episode begins with the host’s introduction: radio station name, programme name, start of programme
• The moderator then introduces the first guest (conspiracy theorist) and asks them to explain their theory and evidence
• The moderator then introduces the first journalist and their counterarguments and evidence.
• The moderator thanks the guests and moves on to part two

PART 2

The moderator hands over to an expert specialising in conspiracy theories and fake news who gives tips on how to identify false information, such as:

• Find out what kind of website is the information found on.
• Find out who the author is. A journalist? An expert on the topic? What is their motive?
• Check the publication date. Information can quickly become obsolete.
• Sources: Information must always be confirmed by 3 different sources before it is published.
• Remind students to always search, be curious, and question
• Remind students that critical thinking is the best weapon we all have against fake news and conspiracy theories.

The moderator thanks the expert, guests, and crew and ends the show.

PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES

This lesson sheet can be used as a basis for a radio programme/podcast creation activity with young people or to simulate a radio programme with conspiracy theorists and journalists.

Getting started

First steps

The first step is to put together a team of very motivated individuals that will bring the project to life and see it through. This will be the editorial ‘core’. You can also bring in regular and occasional participants to be in charge of op-eds, photos, writing jingles, person-on-the-street interviews, longer interviews, social media, uploading podcasts, and scheduling guests. Then you should draw up the roadmap to creating your media outlet and assign responsibilities according to participants’ preferences.

Coming up with a format and identity

• Ask what the aim of your media product is: Do students want to actively shape the life of their school or club? Allow as many young people as possible to express themselves? Encourage their own discussions on the topic of media?
• Determine your target audience: Students in a school? Members of a club? An entire community?
• Figuring out the tone is also vital: Should it be funny? Satirical? Investigative and research-based? Do you want the style to be more direct or more literary?
• Choosing a title (and logo) should also be taken seriously. After all, this is what will set you apart, affirm your identity, and (literally) make a name for your product.
• Finally, you need to take stock of the resources you need for your media product and desired publication frequency. The number of team members, their commitment, and their availability are major factors as well as your available equipment and budget.

Choose your media formula

To maintain the interest of your audience, draw them in, and pique their curiosity, you need to be sure that you supply information in a variety of ways.

Here are the main genres of journalism available to you:

Reports, investigations, and interview pieces are the main genres of journalism.

Editorials, op-eds, news briefs, regular columns, reviews, summaries, portrait pieces, and person-on-the-street interviews offer a wide range of options for adding variety.

Coming up with a topic

• Setting the angle

Choosing a topic is just the first step. You cannot cover every aspect of that topic, otherwise you may end up with an article that is too long, convoluted, and difficult to read. In other words, you may lose your audience. Therefore, you need to pick an angle, or point of view. You need to pick out which of the topic’s aspects you want to highlight and which ones you do not.

Example: ‘Podcasts’ is a topic, ‘women in podcasting’ is an angle.

• The six essential questions

In order to write an article, student journalists need to ask the questions Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?

Creating your media product and bringing it to life

• Simulating an editorial board:
• Setting up an editorial meeting is, firstly, a chance to bring together and introduce the various participants as well as to come up with a name.
• Secondly, the meeting is a chance to discuss the editorial line, the topics to be covered, the various possible angles, and also the formats (report, interview, debate, newsflash)

Ideally, the board should meet once a week or at some regular interval to encourage engagement.

• Assigning roles:

This is also the time to:

• Assign the roles of ‘journalist’, ‘expert’, ‘presenter’, and ‘crew’ (camera operator, editor) so everyone knows who is in charge of what.
• Give guidance to each participant to help them prepare (research, list of questions, reporting, commentary)
• Form groups of two or three based on participants’ skills and preferences
• Students will need to give their media product a visual identity:
• The instructor show students Canva (https://www.canva.com/) to create visual aids (logo, banners, illustrations, etc.).
• Instructors can also point out the tools offered by Madmagz, a newspaper (print and online) design app for young people: https://madmagz.com/ (see Sheet 17)
• Disseminating and promoting information:
• In order to increase your content’s visibility on websites like WordPress, it is important to pay attention to additional enhancing features, such as headlines, ledes, photos, and snippets that show up on search engines.
• These features need to be eye-catching to grab readers’ attention and curiosity.
• Tags (keywords for the topics covered in the article) are also important to improve referencing.
• Social networks can be a forum of expression, a place to post content, and also a platform to raise visibility. Do not hesitate to have a presence on multiple social networks to maximise the reach of your content. Promotional texts should be short and to the point.
• Regardless of the medium or aids (photo, video, or sound) it is crucial to link to other sites.

An article that contains one or more of these features will get many more views than one that is just text with no options to interact with other platforms.

• You must also pay attention to the level of language, which should be neither too formal nor too familiar.

PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES

This lesson sheet can also be used as a basis for a media creation activity with young people.

Critical thinking: a core concept of media literacy

When it comes to media literacy, critical thinking means paying close attention to available information by researching the topic and finding evidence for that information. It is about having a critical eye that does not overgeneralise, jump to conclusions, or blindly accept received wisdom, prejudices, and baseless allegations. In general, critical thinking means thinking autonomously, rationally, and deliberately. It also means being able to analyse and understand media content while bearing in mind the author’s motive.

Critical thinking is based on three principles:

• The principle of autonomy: being able to think for yourself, independently of the people and environment around you.
• The principle of self-awareness: knowing the limits of your understanding of events and knowing how your own cognitive biases and emotions as well as others’ can affect our judgment and beliefs.
• The principle of learning: Critical thinking is learned and acquired through the knowledge and discoveries that lead to intellectual awakening. Specific examples of critical thinking include comparing hypotheses and checking the sources of information.

In concrete terms, thinking critically about media means being committed to the following practices:

• Being informed: Taking the time to become informed, seeking out information and understanding it before judging it, commenting on it, or sharing it.
• Evaluating information: Identifying and checking sources before endorsing the information
• Differentiating fact from interpretation: Separating actual facts from interpretations of events.
• Seeking interpretations: Familiarising oneself with different interpretations that a piece of information might elicit and accepting this diversity.
• Categorising interpretations: Classifying in order of legitimacy the interpretations confirmed by experimentation and research, hypothesis, and opinions arising from belief.

How journalists verify information

Critical thinking is the heart of journalism, which involves examining information thoroughly before publishing it. To do this, a journalist needs to inquire, investigate, and find sources. They analyse facts and possible explanations and put them into perspective.

The practice of journalism is even more vital in today’s digital society where false information, doctored images, and manipulated videos run rampant on the internet.

In media literacy education, the journalistic practice of verifying information has been condensed down to a list of best practices to accommodate a young audience:

• Find out about the site where you found the information. The ‘Legal Notices’ and ‘About’ sections will usually tell you what kind of website you are looking at (blog, humour site, government, etc.).
• Trace the information back to its source. Quite often on the internet, information is shared, spread, and sometimes also distorted, decontextualised, or interpreted. It is therefore important to find out where the information came from.
• Check the information’s publication date. These days, information quickly becomes outdated or is confirmed or denied.
• Check the identity and reliability of the author of the information. Is it a journalist? Are they a specialist in the subject?
• Identify their aims and intentions. Are they looking to inform? Manipulate? Are they selling something?
• Ask the right questions. Be curious and question the author without becoming distrustful or paranoid.

Why it is important to check sources

The source is where information comes from, its starting point. When we talk about finding out where information comes from, we call it ‘tracing it back to the source’.

Cross-checking information is one of the most important and fundamental rules of journalism. Information is moving ever faster, partly due to the explosion of social media and to economic pressures, which have sadly taken a toll on this principle.

A reliable source is usually a qualified person or entity – an expert or informed person on a subject – who is giving information on that subject.

To increase reliability and the chance of being considered correct, information needs to found and confirmed by other sources or be viewable on other media. We say that information must be corroborated to be verified.

There are four main kinds of source:

• Institutional sources: public authorities, governments;
• Intermediary sources: NGOs, professional organisations, political parties, trade unions;
• Personal sources: discreet or secret sources that the journalist has amongst the powerful and within professional circles;
• Occasional sources: spontaneous sources, statements provided voluntarily or on request depending on circumstances, eyewitness reports.

The internet’s opportunities and risks to young people

The internet and mobile telephones, beyond their entertainment value, provide a new way of socialising and accessing essential knowledge for today’s children and teenagers. These new technologies represent an excellent chance to improve the quality of life of young people all over the world and provide unlimited knowledge in all essential areas – including education, health, science, and culture – with just a mouse click. The advances of the digital era are not without downsides, however. The virtual revolution has created dangers and risks similar to those of the real world that young users must face.

UNESCO has identified and classified the risks to young people online. These include exposure to paedophilic content, hate speech, and fake news as well as inappropriate advertisements, commercial scams, and manipulation of personal data.

Education is the best way to respond to these threats that await any young internet user. It is essential for parents and other responsible adults to teach media literacy so that young people learn the best practices that will shield them from the dangers of the internet.

These include properly managing your online digital identity by choosing the right settings for your social media profile and protecting your personal data. Raising awareness about good online citizenship is also important: respecting others’ privacy, thinking before you post, respecting your friends’ right to their image, and so on. These are essential ground rules that help prevent abuses such as cyberbullying.

Teaching young people about filter bubbles

Digital platforms such as Google and Facebook use algorithms to provide content based on our online behaviour, that is, our past interactions such as clicks, likes, purchases, and browser history. Tech companies use algorithms to offer a personalised online experience based on predictive analysis that seeks to anticipate our expectations. For the tech giants, the goal is to influence our behaviour for profit.

The influence of algorithms is far from harmless. It creates a problem for internet users and consumers like ourselves – and especially young people – known as a ‘filter bubble’. This is a situation in which “the information internet users see is the result of a personalisation mechanism that has been deployed without their knowledge”. The term ‘filter bubble’ refers to the isolation created by this mechanism: each user sees a different, unique version of the web. The risk is then that users remain stuck in a narrow digital universe that pushes a continuous loop of the same kinds of information. This algorithmic imprisonment drastically limits sources of information, reduces awareness, and undermines critical thinking. It therefore deprives users of the theoretical broadening of horizons that the internet promises; they no longer benefit from encounters with a range of opinions, which are essential to intellectual development.

This is why media literacy is needed to raise public awareness of the dangers of the algorithmic echo chamber. Understanding how it works is a vital step to breaking out of it and increasing the sources of information one sees. It is an essential condition to making the internet live up to its original promises of emancipation and freedom.