| News Feed First Aid. Defensive scrolling. Here are some basic tricks that everyone online needs to know, especially before they hit Share! If you get ONE shot to teach news literacy to your students, consider beginning with these four skills. |
The organizations on this list have done the work for you. Here are well-researched, thoroughly tested, standards-aligned units, lessons, and classroom materials that you can use today. The core skills are similar, so choose the approach that works best for your students.
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The News Literacy Project is one-stop shopping for 4-12+ lessons, classroom resources, professional development, and current awareness in news and information literacy. Be sure to subscribe to their newsletter, The Sift, for weekly examples and mini-lessons drawn from current events. |
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Register for free to use Checkology, the News Literacy Project's extremely high-quality lessons and resources, co-created by journalists and educators. These 14 mini-units, aligned with standards, can be used separately or as part of a larger information literacy unit. |
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Developed at Stanford University, the COR curriculum is a research-based program that helps educators teach online fact-checking with real-world examples. The curriculum is centered around three questions: Who’s behind the information? What’s the evidence? What do other sources say? |
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Create a free account to access lesson plans, videos, infographics, and other classroom programs from NewseumED. NewseumEd's goal is to teach students about the First Amendment and to help them develop the media literacy skills necessary for every citizen. Materials include lessons on authenticating, analyzing, and evaluating information from a range of sources, and looking at current events in their historical context. |
 Center for News Literacy |
Located at Stonybrook University, the Center for News Literacy developed the first undergraduate course in news literacy in 2006. They have since developed curricula for elementary and high school students, as well as a wealth of resources for teachers. Their self-guided course for high school and college students, while not as polished or interactive as some of the material from other organizations, is well-grounded in research. Create a free account to get full access. |
This is a small selection of organizations fighting misinformation and educating the public and professionals about how to respond. Please see the other pages in this LibGuide for organizations and resources specific to factchecking, journalism, image verification, conspiracy theories, building background knowledge, and science literacy.
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The Poynter Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to upholding the standards of journalism, training and supporting journalists, and promoting the free press as a key component of democracy. They also produce media literacy resources for the public, including Politifact, the Teen Fact-Checking Network, and MediaWise for Seniors. The link to the left will bring you to the homepage for MediaWise, where you can find videos and other resources to help you and your students determine what is true and what isn't on social media and in the news. |
| First Draft News | Rich, deep resources for reporters, students, and news consumers. Not pitched specifically at teachers, but constantly updated with valuable verification tools and analyses of current mis/disinformation. From their mission statement: "At First Draft, our mission is to protect communities from harmful misinformation. We work to empower society with the knowledge, understanding, and tools needed to outsmart false and misleading information." |
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(Harvard) |
"The Nieman Foundation publishes Nieman Reports, a website and quarterly magazine chronicling contemporary challenges and opportunities in journalism; Nieman Journalism Lab, a website reporting on digital media innovation; Nieman Storyboard, a website exploring the art and craft of nonfiction storytelling; as well as a series of print and e-books about current issues in journalism." |
| Teen Fact-Checking Network | "The MediaWise Teen Fact-Checking Network (TFCN) publishes daily fact-checks for teenagers, by teenagers. The program is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network’s code of principles. Follow @MediaWise on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube to see new fact-checks posted daily and learn how you can apply to be part of this program." |
| Center for Media Literacy | One of the oldest organizations advocating for media literacy, CML has lessons and resources for teachers and students. |
| The Pew Center studies “U.S. politics and policy; journalism and media; internet, science and technology; religion and public life.” They’re a great source of information about how people of different ages and other demographic categories are using and understanding media. Check out both links. | |
| FlackCheck | "Headquartered at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, FlackCheck.org is the political literacy companion site to the award-winning FactCheck.org. The site provides resources designed to help viewers recognize flaws in arguments in general and political ads in particular." |
| OpenSecrets | Perhaps only obliquely related to news literacy, OpenSecrets helps you follow the money. "Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, the Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public.” |
| Spurious Correlations | A warning about the use of statistics to falsely imply causality cleverly disguised as stats-nerd comedy. |
| UNESCO: Media and Information Literacy | UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, promotes media and information literacy around the globe. They publish media literacy information for teachers and students in dozens of languages. |
Once you get interested in how data, images, and narratives are constructed and manipulated, you might get slightly obsessed. Digital verification can be addictive! Below are lists of resources that journalists and other information professionals use to analyze images, video, and all kinds of raw information.
News Literacy Project's Digital Verification Resources
Craig Silverman's Verification and Digital Investigations Resources
First Draft's Quick Start Guide to Verifying Online Media
First Draft's Basic Toolkit-- This is a misnomer. This page contains dozens of digital verification tools for journalists.
Bellingcat's OSINT (open source intelligence) spreadsheet. Arguably, this resource doesn't belong on this list. It's an exhaustive list of verification tools for journalists and others conducting online intelligence investigations. Click through the different sheets at the bottom of the spreadsheet to see everything available. If nothing else, your students will get a sense of how much there is to know!
Bonus! Julie Goldberg's Fairly Chaotic List of Useful and Interesting News Literacy Resources-- Includes some great articles. Keep scrolling!
