Learning to spot the fakes — at an early age

Winnipeg Free Press

2 days ago

Opinion
Finland has an enviable record when it comes to figuring out what's true, and what's not. In 2023, as it has done for years, Finland led the Open Society Institute — Sofia's (OSIS) Media Literacy Index.
Finns are quite simply better prepared to recognize disinformation and misinformation, and that preparation starts with education.
'Finland's government considers the strong public education system as a main tool to resist information warfare against the country and 'widespread critical thinking skills among the Finnish population and a coherent government response' is thought to be a key element for resisting fake news campaigns,' OSIS wrote in the introduction to the 2023 index.
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Finland is often at the top of global rankings for media literacy.
Canada isn't terribly far behind — we ranked at seventh in 2023, and fourth in education in media literacy.
But the Finns have always been out in front.
Why? Because they start early.
Media literacy is part of the country's national core curriculum — and the effort starts in preschool. Teachers have a broad range of ways to draw media literacy into a variety of lesson plans — as a story in the New York Times pointed out, 'A teacher in Helsinki, Anna Airas, said she and her students searched words like 'vaccination' and discussed how search algorithms worked and why the first results might not always be the most reliable. Other teachers also said that in recent months, during the war in Ukraine, they had used Russian news sites and memes as the basis for a discussion about the effects of state-sponsored propaganda.'
Other teachers emphasize how to identify AI-generated photographs: still others teach about the need to go back to examine the original sources for stories on social media sites and the need to weigh the trustworthiness of those sources.
It's a valuable effort: with more and more information coming at us every single day, it's important to know what is accurate, and what is designed for other, more sinister ends.
That's why the Free Press is joining with the Manitoba government and the Winnipeg School Division to develop a made-in-Manitoba project. The project is following the model of the New York Times Learning Network, and is being designed by local teachers to help teach media literacy for students from kindergarten to Grade 12. It's expected to provide lesson material on issues like data and privacy, propaganda and the responsible use of artificial intelligence.
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The problem, in some ways, is a simple one: we're preconditioned to accept information that we already agree with, and, if we do agree with it, we're less likely to rigorously challenge it — or even question it. In fact, we often simply pick it up and run with it, immediately using a piece we agree with to justify our own beliefs.
It means we can all be guilty of missing a crucial step along the way — the place where you step back for a second, dig a little deeper, and establish if you really should be passing along a 'news' story that's actually nothing of the kind.
The idea is not to tell students what to believe, or even to tell them, 'this source and this source and this source are accurate and can always be trusted.' It's to give them the tools to be able to decide for themselves what an accurate source of information would look like and to discern the signs of misinformation.
These are complex times, and huge amounts of information flow into our digital devices — from tablets to laptops to phones — with virtually no filters whatsoever. It's all about giving students a chance in a challenging environment.
And maybe catching those pesky Finns.