Fake News at The Grove!

Fake news is our final Whole School Theme for this academic year.

Fake news is false or misleading information that is presented as news. The amount of fake news, and the ability to detect it, is likely to get much more difficult with the growth of AI and, in today’s information age, the distribution of fake news on social media accounts is increasingly easy.

Years 7 & 8 will be discussing examples of fake news that they have seen or heard and why it is a problem. They will learn about the possible characteristics of fake news and how to identify a fake news story – and will be introduced to fact-checking websites such as Snopes or FactCheck.org, where they can check whether news stories are likely to be true.

In addition to this, Years 9-12 will also be learning about analysing information for reliability and what we should consider when deciding if information is reliable or not: Authorship, Objectivity, Currency, Citations, Consistency. They will be discussing why social media algorithms, that result in us mainly seeing content which supports our own current world views, can be problematic.

Our Senior Boarding Tutor & Assistant Librarian, Poppy Winks, highlights that fake news spreads much like a virus – quickly, widely and often without people realising it – and refers to The Rules of Contagion by British epidemiologist, Adam Kucharski, which explores how the same mathematical models use to track diseases can help us understand the spread of ideas, behaviours and misinformation. Kucharski shows that misinformation has a kind of “reproduction number”, just like a virus, and the more emotionally charged or polarising the content, the more likely it is to be shared.

Echo chambers – created by social media algorithms – create the perfect conditions for fake news to flourish. However, just like a viral outbreak, the spread of fake news can be slowed. Hopefully our media-savvy Grovians will be on the frontline in the fight against fake news; reducing exposure to unreliable sources, promoting credible information and challenging falsehoods.

At this time of year, it is important to remember that a good education is not just about passing exams. It is about equipping young people for the world of today – and preparing them for the world of tomorrow. At The Grove, we take this responsibility very seriously. And that, definitely, is not fake news.

I am prepared

I am Grovian