--- title: Media Literacy & Misinformation description: Media literacy is the ability to judge where information comes from and whether to trust it. You will learn lateral reading and source verification, how misinformation spreads, image and video verification, and what research shows actually corrects false beliefs. category: social-sciences subcategory: media-studies difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/media-literacy-and-misinformation --- # Media Literacy & Misinformation Media literacy is the ability to judge where information comes from and whether to trust it. You will learn lateral reading and source verification, how misinformation spreads, image and video verification, and what research shows actually corrects false beliefs. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 2 Websites • 3 Papers ## Websites ### 1. Media Education Lab Lesson plans, curriculum toolkits, and professional development from the digital and media literacy center directed by Renee Hobbs at the University of Rhode Island. Educators come away with classroom-ready methods for helping students analyze and create media messages. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.mediaeducationlab.com/ **Tags:** media-literacy, digital-literacy, curriculum, critical-thinking, lesson-plans ### 2. SIFT (The Four Moves) **Author:** Mike Caulfield The canonical free reference for the method, readable in 10 minutes and worth rereading as a quick guide. Mike Caulfield's original description of SIFT: Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, and Trace claims, quotes and media to their original context. Short, Creative Commons licensed, and the basis for many university information-literacy programs. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/ **Tags:** sift-method, fact-checking, lateral-reading, source-evaluation, information-literacy ## Podcasts ### 1. Stats + Stories **Author:** John Bailer, Rosemary Pennington Long-running interview podcast from Miami University and the American Statistical Association in which John Bailer and Rosemary Pennington talk with statisticians, researchers and journalists about the data behind news stories. Listeners learn how statistics are produced, reported and misread, and how to question them. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://statsandstories.net **Tags:** statistics, statistical-literacy, data-journalism, science-communication ## Papers ### 1. The Debunking Handbook 2020 **Author:** Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, et al. Free 19-page consensus guide by Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook and 20 other misinformation researchers. It covers why corrections often fail to stick, prebunking and inoculation, how rare the backfire effect is, and the fact-myth-fallacy-fact format for debunking. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://skepticalscience.com/debunking-handbook-2020-downloads-translations.html **Tags:** debunking, misinformation, prebunking, inoculation-theory, backfire-effect, science-communication ### 2. The Spread of True and False News Online **Author:** Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, Sinan Aral Study in Science of about 126,000 rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. Falsehoods spread farther, faster and deeper than truth, especially political ones. The effect came from human sharing, linked to novelty, not from bots. Answers the topic's 'how misinformation spreads' question with primary evidence rather than commentary. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://politics.media.mit.edu/papers/Vosoughi_Science.pdf **Tags:** misinformation, false-news, social-media, information-diffusion, twitter, computational-social-science ### 3. Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information **Author:** Sam Wineburg, Sarah McGrew Study comparing how professional fact-checkers, PhD historians and Stanford undergraduates judged unfamiliar websites. The fact-checkers left the site and read laterally across other tabs, reaching better-supported conclusions in less time. This is the empirical basis for lateral reading. Shows why lateral reading works and why checklist approaches fail, using think-aloud evidence. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://purl.stanford.edu/yk133ht8603 **Tags:** lateral-reading, fact-checking, source-evaluation, digital-literacy, expertise ## Books ### 1. Verification Handbook: For Disinformation and Media Manipulation **Author:** Craig Silverman (editor) Free online handbook (third edition, 2020) edited by Craig Silverman, with chapters by working investigators. It covers checking social media accounts, bots and inauthentic activity, images, deepfakes, closed messaging groups, websites, ads, and cross-platform information operations, plus six case studies. The step up from judging sources to investigating content and actors: image, video and account verification at a professional level. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/verification-3 **Tags:** verification, disinformation, osint, deepfakes, image-verification, information-operations ### 2. Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online **Author:** Mike Caulfield, Sam Wineburg The single definitive book on the topic's core skill set, grounded in the authors' own studies of professional fact-checkers. Guide by SIFT creator Mike Caulfield and Stanford researcher Sam Wineburg. It covers lateral reading, judging sources and experts, tracing images and videos, reading search results, and why critical ignoring beats deep reading. Includes many worked examples. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226822060?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** lateral-reading, fact-checking, source-evaluation, sift-method, critical-ignoring, digital-literacy ### 3. LikeWar **Author:** P. W. Singer, Emerson T. Brooking A researched account of how social media became a battlefield, drawing on cases from ISIS recruitment to Russian influence operations and viral misinformation. Readers learn how attention, virality and platform design are exploited to manipulate opinion, and why their own online activity is a target. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0358108470?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** information-warfare, social-media, disinformation, propaganda, influence-operations ## Youtubes ### 1. Crash Course Navigating Digital Information **Author:** John Green Ten short episodes hosted by John Green covering fact-checking, lateral reading, judging who is behind a source, using Wikipedia, evaluating evidence, photos and videos, data and infographics, click restraint, and social media feeds. The best free on-ramp: about two hours of video that teaches the moves that research shows work (lateral reading, click restraint) rather than checklists. Well suited to a first pass before the book. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtN07XYqqWSKpPrtNDiCHTzU **Tags:** lateral-reading, fact-checking, click-restraint, source-evaluation, digital-literacy, crash-course --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/media-literacy-and-misinformation