NLP News

Once again, our nation must face the scourge of racial injustice with the recent killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, among too many others. These deaths have sparked protests around the country, highlighting the critical importance of our rights: to seek racial justice, to seek a redress of grievances, and to safeguard…

In response to growing concerns about how Twitter handles tweets from elected officials that violate the social media platform’s rules and community standards, News Literacy Project Founder and CEO Alan C. Miller issued the following statement: “This is a very important issue that grows more pressing each day and is only amplified by the current…

A few years ago Heather Turner, a teacher librarian in the Fabius-Pompey Central School District in central New York, saw social media posts from other librarians about Checkology® virtual classroom, and she was intrigued. “I was looking for something to augment what I was already doing with digital citizenship,” says Turner, who has been an…

While 58% of Americans report being “well-informed” about COVID-19 and the virus that causes it, more than a third (36%) say they feel “overwhelmed” by the information (and misinformation) circulating about the pandemic: That’s a key finding from a new survey conducted by Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part…

Conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic can be described in a variety of ways — alarming, outlandish, dangerous — but they shouldn’t be surprising. Even the Plandemic “documentary” that suddenly swept its way across social media earlier this month did so on a path paved with fragments of pandemic conspiracy theories that were already in…

The 26-minute video Plandemic which pushed an array of dangerous and provably false conspiracy theories and other misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic ignited fringe communities last week and went massively viral before major social media companies took steps to remove it from their platforms. Purporting to be a preview of an upcoming “documentary,” Plandemic relies…

Not long after schools closed in Jackson, Wyoming, in March due to COVID-19 health concerns, Charlotte Krugh found that her daughter, Julia, 11, had too much free time on her hands. The sixth-grader’s distance learning assignments occupied her about three hours a day. Her sister Eliza, 9, who attends a different school, had a full…

YouTube users in the United States will soon see information panels from third-party fact-checkers at the top of some search results, the company announced on April 28, citing the rapid spread of misinformation about COVID-19. The panels will appear in searches for specific claims and will feature relevant articles from “an open network of third-party…

The European Journalism Centre, a journalism training and advocacy nonprofit in Maastricht, Netherlands, has released the third edition of its Verification Handbook, an online primer designed to help journalists investigate online content. The guide is edited by Craig Silverman, the media editor at BuzzFeed News and a digital fact-checking pioneer, and includes contributions from a…

In honor of World Press Freedom Day, NLP’s founder and CEO, Alan C. Miller, wrote an op-ed for CNN about why we must allow journalists to do the hard work of keeping the public safe and informed during this pandemic. “Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by attacks on press freedoms and journalists around the world amid the Covid-19…

The next decade is critical for the future of journalism, and the COVID-19 pandemic is deepening existing crises that already threaten free and independent reporting, Reporters Without Borders said April 21 as it released its annual World Press Freedom Index, which ranks 180 countries and regions on the level of freedom they afford journalists. Christophe…

Both Facebook and Google have announced new transparency measures intended to give users more information about who is behind the posts and ads they see. In an April 22 Facebook Newsroom post, Anita Joseph and Georgina Sheedy-Collier, product managers for Facebook and Instagram (owned by Facebook), said that the platforms will be providing “the location…

Earlier this year – back in the days before the U.S. largely shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic – we held a NewsLitCamp® in Columbia, South Carolina. In attendance was a team of educators led by Erin Wilder, who had driven nearly three hours and 200 miles from Hoschton, Georgia, to be a part of…

Xenophobic incidents, racism and attacks against Asian Americans — based on false narratives that COVID-19 came from the “other” — are sadly predictable, says Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a journalism education and advocacy organization in St. Petersburg, Florida. “Here is how the contagion of irrationality works,” he wrote in an…

Facebook groups coordinating efforts to protest stay-at-home orders in cities and states across the country have been established in the last week alone. Three brothers who also manage a number of hard-line gun advocacy organizations and websites created at least four of them — targeting New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, The Washington Post reported.…

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored both the threat to public health posed by pervasive misinformation and the need for expanded news literacy education to combat it. The News Literacy Project has long had a critical role in ensuring that students have the skills and tools to distinguish fact from fiction. In today’s rapidly evolving circumstances,…

Since Brian Winkel began teaching high school in 1993, he has posed countless questions to his English and journalism students. But now his goal is to ensure they are the ones asking questions — specifically about the information they encounter online. “I wanted them to be more media savvy,” he says. Recognizing that young people…

As an exchange student at Cedar Falls High School in Iowa during the 2018-19 school year, Cătălin Vilae spent his senior year exploring new landscapes — literally and figuratively. Living and studying 5,300 miles away from his home, family and familiar surroundings in Alexandria, Romania, he learned to navigate Iowa’s physical landscape and the information…

Online conspiracy theories pushing false connections between 5G technology and the COVID-19 pandemic are continuing to rapidly gain momentum. Social media accounts and groups dedicated to advancing these theories have accumulated hundreds of thousands of new followers, including a number of celebrities, in recent weeks. In the United Kingdom, where these theories have particularly taken…

As news organizations have continued to lay off, furlough or cut the pay of their employees during the COVID-19 pandemic (28,000 and counting, The New York Times reported last week), fundraisers and other supportive efforts are emerging to assist affected journalists and newsrooms. For example, Microloans for Journalists, a program created by journalists, connects journalists…

This piece is part of a series, presented by our partner SAS, that explores the role of data in understanding the COVID-19 pandemic. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field. (Check out other posts in the series on our Get Smart About COVID-19 Misinformation page.) Case fatality rate vs. mortality rate…

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored a new reality that now permeates our lives: misinformation is a threat not just to the public life of our country, but to our public health as well. For weeks, the internet has been awash in what the World Health Organization is calling an “infodemic” (PDF): “an over-abundance of information…

This piece is part of a series, presented by our partner SAS, that explores the role of data in understanding the COVID-19 pandemic. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field. (Check out other posts in the series on our Get Smart About COVID-19 Misinformation page.) In addition to comparisons of COVID-19…

A baseless conspiracy theory about the COVID-19 pandemic migrated from fringe internet communities into more mainstream conversations last week, spreading dangerous doubt about the seriousness of the pandemic across the United States and around the world. The theory — that the pandemic is a staged hoax or “false flag” event — had emerged among anti-vaccination…

This is the first of a series, presented by our partner SAS, that explores the role of data in understanding the COVID-19 pandemic. SAS is a pioneer in the data management and analytics field. (Check out other posts in the series on our Get Smart About COVID-19 Misinformation page.) The COVID-19 pandemic has plunged us…

When a news event or a significant issue grabs hold of the public’s attention, it’s human nature for us to want to get our hands on as much information as we can as fast as we can. It’s also human nature to act on an impulse to share that information with friends, family and the…

In the last week, both Twitter and Facebook have announced additional measures to combat the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes the disease. Twitter announced on March 18 that it would remove coronavirus-related content that goes “directly against guidance” from public health and government authorities, such as false…

The parallels between the spread of the new strain of coronavirus and the spread of misinformation and confusion about it — between the actual pandemic and what the World Health Organization calls an “infodemic” — offer a number of important and urgent lessons in news and information literacy. Just as COVID-19 has thrown the weaknesses…

Peter Adams, NLP’s senior vice president of education, talked with NPR’s Michel Martin about misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic on the March 14 edition of All Things Considered. He began by describing the types of misinformation being spread about SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19. “This pandemic has brought out a really clear…

A new study (PDF) shows that YouTube’s efforts to limit the reach of harmful conspiracy theory videos via its algorithmic recommendations have produced positive, but inconsistent, results. From October 2018 to February 2020, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley recorded more than 8 million “Up next” video recommendations made by the YouTube algorithm in…

The innovative and aggressive social media strategy of Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign is testing the limits of newly established political advertising policies at social media companies. Earlier this month, the campaign paid people behind highly influential accounts on Instagram to post humorous memes supporting Bloomberg’s candidacy. In response, Facebook — which owns Instagram — said…

Are you an educator who has used the Checkology® virtual classroom this school year and have an outstanding young woman of color in your class who has particularly benefited from the platform? If so, we hope you will nominate her to be considered for a special award from the News Literacy Project: the Gwen Ifill…

Misinformation comes at us every day, across a plethora of platforms and through myriad methods. It’s all part of an increasingly complex and fraught information landscape. But what exactly do we mean when we say misinformation? We define it as information that is misleading, erroneous or false. While misinformation is sometimes created and shared intentionally,…

A BuzzFeed News investigation last week exposed a large network of  bogus local and financial news websites — replete with recycled press releases and plagiarized news stories — designed to make money in a number of ways. Matt McGorty*, who has experience in the financial information industry, established some of the sites as far back as…

As rapidly as the coronavirus has spread in recent weeks, viral misinformation about the disease has far outpaced it, reaching millions of people on every continent in far less time. Dozens of photos and videos — of masked medical personnel; of people collapsing, being loaded into ambulances, lying in the street, and waiting in quarantine…

With our partner, The E.W. Scripps Company, we at the News Literacy Project are grateful to all of the educators, students, journalists and members of the public who joined us for National News Literacy Week. We had terrific participation on social media and through Scripps’ local TV stations across the country, and high visibility thanks…

Gwen Ifill, who was one of most respected journalists of her generation and a longtime friend and supporter of the News Literacy Project, is being honored today by the U.S. Postal Service with a Forever stamp. “Gwen Ifill was an extraordinary journalist and colleague, a relentless champion of news literacy and a treasured friend,” said…

The News Literacy Project (NLP) and The E.W. Scripps Company are joining forces for National News Literacy Week (Jan. 27-31) — an initiative that will raise awareness of news literacy as a fundamental life skill and highlight the vital role of a free press in a healthy democracy. This campaign will provide educators, students and…

A flattering piece about Facebook posted by Teen Vogue was the source of much confusion last week. “How Facebook Is Helping Ensure the Integrity of the 2020 Election” appeared on Jan. 8 without any indication that it was a piece of sponsored content, paid for by the world’s largest social media company. Soon after it…

Coordinated efforts to disseminate propaganda online are supported by “a worldwide industry of PR and marketing firms ready to deploy fake accounts, false narratives, and pseudo news websites for the right price,” according to a Jan. 6 report by BuzzFeed News and The Reporter, an investigative news outlet in Taiwan. Such businesses — which in…