Information literacy is key in the age of AI

Join eSchool News for 12 Days of edtech with the most read and loved stories of 2024. On the fourth day of edtech, our story focuses on information literacy and artificial intelligence.

Key points:

From New York to Texas, the pro-Palestinian protests sweeping American universities have become a hotbed of viral misinformation, from Falsely attributed songs of “Jewish genocide” to discredited claims of <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/CJS_FACTCHECK/status/1784063955385618440″ target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Hamas presence. As the tenor of the accusations reaches a fever pitch, students at Columbia University have even <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/CJS_FACTCHECK/status/1784063955385618440″ target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>launched his own fact-checking twitter account. When this highly charged moment collides with a hyperpartisan landscape, it offers a stark reminder of how misinformation thrives at the intersection of fierce emotions and polarized politics, threatening to stifle nuance, facts, and good faith dialogue when they are needed. most. All of this points to the urgency of addressing misinformation through information literacy.

Misinformation has long played a role in global events. Technological change and increasingly global communications have made the deliberate spread of inaccurate information faster and more impactful. With the birth of ai, misinformation has entered a new era, so it is essential to teach students how to question sources, spot fakes, and be discerning consumers of news, social media, and information.

ai has dramatically complicated the information landscape by rapidly generating and amplifying misleading narratives, deepfakes, and ai-generated visuals, prompting concern from world leaders as a major emerging challenge. The latest from the World Economic Forum Global Risks Reportwhich surveyed experts from academia, business, government, the international community and civil society, named misinformation and misinformation from ai as the main global risk in the next two years, ahead of climate change and war.

The stakes are high, especially as the United States approaches a critical election year, a year that will undoubtedly be subject to misinformation, a force that voters will remember as having played a pivotal role in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

As an academic who has studied how governments and non-state actors use digital technology for the purposes of repression and information control, these issues are especially concerning. It is urgent to promote greater critical thinking among young people, giving them the tools to detect which information is authentic and which has been manipulated. Information literacy, specifically on digital platforms, should be a mandatory part of all K-12 curricula, to combat the rise of misinformation and develop more demanding students prepared to face an ai-driven future.

How and where misinformation can take place

Misinformation can appear anywhere, but it thrives on stories that appeal to emotions. Electoral issues and partisan politics are a prime example. During the pandemic, COVID-19 misinformation narratives, encompassing bizarre claims that the disease spreads through 5G and other conspiracies, spread faster than the virus itself, thanks to digital technology. Anti-vaccine groups essentially tricked facebook's algorithms into allowing posts that spread misinformation using a carrot emoji instead of the word “vaccine.” If we analyze climate change – another highly polarized and partisan issue –, probe on a subset of social media accounts revealed hundreds of stolen, ai-generated images used in greenwashing campaigns.

Praying for the emotions that arose after the deadly October 7^th During the attacks and subsequent attacks on Gaza, ai-powered deepfakes have spread at an unprecedented rate. Shortly after October 7^thA false story emerged that Qatar had threatened to cut off the world's supply of natural gas if Israel did not stop its bombing of Gaza, garnering millions of views before it was finally taken down. discredited. More recently, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been the target of disinformation, thanks to a <a target="_blank" href="https://dfrlab.org/2024/02/14/suspicious-accounts-on-x-amplify-allegations-against-unrwa/” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>fake account network and websites that have collaborated to spread accusations about the agency's ties to Hamas.

Not only is misinformation incredibly detrimental to the delivery of accurate and verifiable information, it has also eroded public trust in some of our most trusted institutions. Only 32 percent of Americans They say they trust the media, a figure that is tied with record levels in 2016.

Engaging with misinformation and ai as teaching moments

Misinformation can be rectified through fact-checking, but in many cases, a false story has already done its damage before it is corrected. Another strategy is 'prebunking', a technique that is gaining momentum and helps build preventative resilience to misinformation.

We can combat the spread of misinformation by encouraging and teaching more critical thinking, especially about artificial intelligence, algorithms and deception, and the value of greater subject knowledge.

Whether you are a teacher in K-12 schools, a university instructor, or simply an individual who actively participates in online platforms, there are many steps that can be taken to ensure greater understanding and literacy around misinformation and ai. This, in turn, will instill greater trust in the institutions and organizations that disseminate the information we seek.

Context-based case studies, such as videos of celebrities and influencers, can serve as important teaching moments. In my classes, I have challenged students to discern what a deepfake or ai-generated image is through exercises such as reverse image searches. This teaches them to spot clues such as blurry details, inconsistent lighting, unsynchronized audio and images, and the credibility of the image source. We spend time analyzing and discussing the spread, origins, and nature of social media manipulation, which equips students with important data literacy skills.

Bringing the study of misinformation to the classroom

What we know about the world ultimately determines how we address misinformation and deception. Today's students need an interdisciplinary approach that starts early, so the fundamentals of critical thinking and information literacy are instilled at a young age and stay with them as they grow and mature.

In Finland, media literacy forms a core component of the national curriculum, starting at the preschool level. They begin with understanding the basic elements of media and move on from there to understand more complex elements, such as identifying sources. It is not a single subject; rather, it is taught in different disciplines, including Finnish language and literature, mathematics, and art, to develop a complete set of analytical skills. in a survey published by the Open Society Institute in Bulgaria, Finland is ranked No. 1 among 41 European countries in resilience against misinformation for the fifth time in a row. Finland's population also has a higher level of trust in news and other institutions: 76 percent of Finns consider print and digital newspapers to be trustworthy, according to a survey by market research company IRO Research.

There is no denying the impact of misinformation and the impact it is having on political processes around the world. We will undoubtedly see the use of disinformation throughout the battle over the 2024 US presidential election, but a concerted effort to develop greater critical thinking can help alleviate the impact. By becoming more knowledgeable about what misinformation is, as well as different countries, cultures, and topics, we can better navigate the variety of misinformation scenarios in the digital world and foster a questioning mindset.

See the previous 12 days of edtech:
1st edtech Day
2nd day of edtech
3rd edtech Day