LTC Lunch - Evidence-based Strategies for Navigating a Polluted Information Environment

While education is often framed as a necessary bulwark against the threat of misinformation, a mounting body of evidence shows that common approaches to teaching media literacy and critical thinking are ineffective, if not counterproductive, when applied to online information. As a result, many students enter college unprepared to navigate an information environment where they are constantly confronted by propaganda posing as fact, manipulated statistics, hyperpartisan clickbait, questionable ‘research’ studies, and everything in between. This session will explore insights from recent educational research analyzing how students assess online information, paying particular attention to the faulty mental models many students bring with them to college. After a discussion of emerging evidence-based strategies for helping students orient themselves within their polluted information environment, we will spend time brainstorming ways to incorporate some of these best practices into our teaching across disciplines. Dimitri Pavlounis, Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies.