Our current crop of high school students has grown up with social media as an integral part of their lives. Hardly anything happens to them that isn't documented with photos or video.
Granted, everything every student creates and posts on social media may not be deemed newsworthy, but those who have a "nose for news"—those budding citizen journalists—may move into the territory of news content creation and distribution.
In fact, when a student takes on the role of citizen journalist, he or she can gain a better understanding of what goes into the production of news content—that journalists just don't take a photo or record a video and post it without understanding all angles of the story and considering the potential effects of posting it.
Aside from content creation and distribution, social media inevitably involves sharing/retweeting/reposting content our students receive from others.
And this is where it can get tricky.
Students have to differentiate between opinion and news, between fake news and real news, which means verification: They have to slow down and put in the extra effort it takes to investigate the information at hand to determine its truthfulness.
In fact, we need to groom students to approach the content they see on social media with skepticism and with vigilance; instead of automatically assuming an article, photo, or video is true, they should tackle the content with the mindset that it may not be true, that some research may need to be performed in order to verify its truthfulness, particularly before sharing it themselves.
It's also a good idea for students, once they've conducted that verification research, to include it with the content they're sharing on social media. This will show consumers farther along the social media chain that the content has been verified, and as the information is reposted by others, that verification will be included (although we all know there are ways of manipulating content...which is why we're even having this discussion).
Another benefit of including content verification is that your students will earn a reputation on social media of sharing only content that has been verified with proof of its verification—consumers of their content will automatically know they can trust information posted or shared by this person. We all know that one person who shares bizarre stories and Photoshopped images through social media (sadly, probably more than one)—well, your students will not be among their ilk!
Our students also have to be willing to take responsibility for what they pass along. Just shrugging their shoulders and claiming they only shared/retweeted/reposted it, so they bear no responsibility for it isn't enough.
Adapted from
Crandall, Diana. (2017). "How to Protect Yourself Against Manipulated 'Fake News Videos.'" RealClearLife.
www.realclearlife.com/technology/how-to-protect-yourself-against-manipulated-fake-news-videos
Goble, Don. (2017). "Students as journalists: Combating the fake news outbreak." PBS Teachers Lounge.
http://www.pbs.org/education/blog/students-as-journalists-combating-the-fake-news-outbreak
