Correcting Misinformation
Remind students of some of the reasons why people choose not to correct false or misleading information when they see it: because they’re not sure what is true, because are afraid of hurting someone’s feelings, and because they don’t think anyone will listen.
Have have students watch the video in the Three Ways to Correct Misinformation student chapter and go through the content with them.
Next, have them look at the two scenarios in the Debunking Practice student chapter.
Ask students which strategy they would use to respond to each of the posts. (Make sure they understand that in these scenarios, Jared is a classmate working on a project with them, and Lloyd is a family member.)
You can have students write their answers individually or in pairs if you prefer, or simply take the question up as a class.
Now discuss the two posts. Make sure the following points come up:
Jared and the Titanic:
The stakes are high here: if you let Jared use that theory, you might fail your history report, so it’s not enough to question it,.
Also, because this is a private message, there isn’t an audience to worry about.
Since you and Jared have to work together, you’ll probably want to debunk this politely and say something like “I looked through the Titanic article on Wikipedia and there’s nothing about it being switched with another ship.”
Uncle Lloyd and ticks:
If Uncle Lloyd likes to argue, you would probably be better off just asking a question, like “Are you sure? Maybe they just never mentioned it to you.”
If you feel comfortable, the best thing would be to correct him by providing accurate information from a reliable source, like “The Johns Hopkins Medicine site says there are 300,000 new cases of Lyme disease each year, and the longer you wait to treat it the worse it gets.”