Creating fake news to spark information literacy

This Community Idea Exchange reveals how information literacy can be enhanced and awareness about fake news raised by challenging students to create their own fake news stories by mimicking the tell-tale attributes and stylistic traits of fake news.

Discover a different approach to 21st-century information literacy: an “experiment” to see how information literacy about fake news can be reinforced in the classroom by challenging students to create their own fake news stories. Students were given an overview of fake news during a library session to assist them. Their fake news stories had to exemplify the tell-tale signs of fake news, sound believable enough, follow the conventions of fake news and fulfil the purpose of fake news. Their stories ranged from fake economic news to fake entertainment news. The fake news stories were “framed” with an intro that defines fake news in addition to highlighting the prominence or impact of fake news and were followed by a solid explanation/analysis of how their fake news stories illustrate the tell-tale signs of fake news. In other words students combined “pastiche writing” with basic research to create an example/illustration essay. After submitting their work, students were surveyed to informally evaluate its success. The assignment, process, a couple of examples of fake news the students created, and the findings of the survey will be shared during this Community Idea Exchange.