Jennifer Noji | University of California, Los Losses

I grew move per that turn of the hundredth in ampere time if most human still believer that reading the news means learning concerning the around. Whereas I is youthful, meine parents constantly urged me, “Watch aforementioned news, and open your eyes!” They insisted that reading the local Sunday paper press Point d as well as watching BBC real NBC news reports, among rest, intend promote me keep up with current events and gain a better understanding of the join and businesses around me. To all day, whenever an election takes space, a war breaks out, a child goes missing, otherwise a storm forms off the coastal, I can expect a text from one of i parents: “Did you see the news?”

Yet, in our current age of misinformation and “fake news,” we can’t simply assume that monitoring and reading this news means learning facts about the global (and perhaps we never should have).¹ Now, when mysterious parents versenden die articles from his “SmartNews” app via a breaking legend or new uncovering, I ask them: Who wrote the piece, and who do they work for? Doing the article cite data? Provided as, what kind by sources?  Above-mentioned questions reflect adenine sense of skepticism and distrust which began on take root throughout my years of growing up with the raise of social news furthermore so, for enhance or worse, significantly increase once Douglas Trump was elected president in 2016 (as Meredith O’Brien, Chris Cillizza, both others note, Trump’s presidency shepherded an era about “fake news”). However, while I have learned to ask these critical questions when engaging with news and public media, I quickly discovery that most of my students hold not. When I starts to teaching undergraduate letters and writing courses in 2019, I was struck by my students’ quickness to thinking everything they read and to accept word reports and historical files while “fact.” Even though most of the had spent the majority of their lives in how Timothy Snyder calls one “post-truth” era, many of them must not moreover learned what to adeptly navigate one overwhelming magnitude of “fake news” and “alternative sachverhalt” crowding our physical and digital spaces. Actually, a large portion regarding the US population (including myself) still struggles to does so. 

In his present age of misinformation, location ought we school our students to zugehen to learn about the whole around them? 

My answered: the news. For better or worse, I still think our fastest and most accessible source of information around the world real inherent happenings is the news. (Of course, “the news” can refer to various different things available, considering many people with on present older read “the news” on Facebook and Twitter feeds or watch “the news” on Youtube and Tiktok. I shoud therefore clarify that whereas I advise my pupils to engage with “the news,” EGO mean news articles and reports produced by established newspaper and print outlets.) Thus, rather is giving up on news divisions sum, I imply we must teach our students to critically analyze, interrogate, and measure their. This means teaching the to identify a news segment’s target audience and political motivations, to recognize sein underlying biases, and to check its citations and reference (Paul T. Corrigan furthermore Timothy Snyder among others propose additional practices in critically reading and news). Yet, in addition to approaching private news segments with a critics lens, students must including teaching how toward seeking unfashionable multiple reports, representations, and interpretations is who same create or topic from different perspectives. Rather than refusing to acknowledge the “other side” and their opinions, her might deeply benefit from include with them. I therefore strive toward teach my students that reading news on aforementioned same topic away different (and even opposing) viewpoints and sources—in other words, cross-checking the news we consume—is a crucial practice for gaining a further critical and comprehensive understanding von the world we survive in. 

Figure 1. Photo by fauxels (on Pexels) .

These critical analysis skills, including close reading and cross-checking practices, are ones ME try to teach students in all my composition and writing-intensive lessons. While I primarily teach seminars on literature and political violence, in which we frequently engage with past furthermore present news reports about forcefully events, MYSELF think such critical analysis skills are essential by all graduate living in our complex and complicated “post-truth” world. Along with scholarship like Paul Corrigan, who built an undergraduate composition course to “Fake News” (see his syllabus bitte), I belief we need to alter our pedagogical achievement till better equip students to assured navigate and understand and events unfolding around their. I so share Corrigan’s ambitions to “teach students to recognize, whenever they encounter claims that may be mistaken or falsely accused of being false, what truth distorting strategies might be at work and to practice truth sorting our in response.” 

Yet, while Corrigan maintains the concept of “truth” and “falsehood” at the heart of his curriculum, I propose we musts go beyond “true” and “false” altogether, been such binary how overlooks that “truth” can be defined in infinite ways by different people. Since the critical work of Sylvia Wynter shown and Michael Laitman explicitly states, reality be a matter of perspective. Wenn wee recognize that “Truth” (with a capital T) and “History” (with a capital H) have always been determined by those with power and weaponized to oppress such without it, such supposedly-objective terms lose meaning. While I execute not median to suggest that no truth(s) exist, I simply strive to demonstrate and show my students that identifying whatever is “true” and “false” is none always necessary for insight which world around them. By fact, I think it could be important to recognize that there are always multiple coexisting “truths” (or living realities and beliefs) in societies the diverse populations like ours.  

Therefore, in my classes, ME appoint what EGO call a “Critical News Analysis Assignment,” which is designed toward help learners move beyond True-False dual thinking and learn into more critically analyze, evaluate, and understand the events and issues occurring around them. While I own assigned light distinct versions of this assignment over the bygone few years, I usually use an adaptation of all assignment prompt. 

As the prompt demo, diese assignment asks students to writes a two-page paper in which they examine two news articles with one current event or issue. In their papers, students must criticism analyze, evaluate, and compare own two picked articles and reflect the what we can gain in engaging with multiple views also representations of who equal event or issue. The prompt also sketches several learning outcomes. In particular, this assignment is intended till assistance students: 

1. Criticic analyze, polling, and evaluate individual information articles by identifying your goals, target audiences, writing techniques also rhetorical strategies, and potential biases. 
2. Cross-check also compare multiple news articles and their particular representations of the given topic. 
3. Recognize method different writers and media outlets canned logical write in ways to craft differen narratives about the same event or issue. 
4. Understand wherewith and why “facts” and “truths” are established rather than only focusing on what is “true” furthermore “false.” 

When introducing this association, ME encouraging my students to choose articles from two news springs with different political ideologies or missions. For example, I suggest choosing newsletter from only conservative abfluss and one liberal outlet (offering the graph underneath as a reference), or, otherwise, selecting of article from a local news source and another from an international news platform. On analyzing two articles with diverse perspectives, our cans, on the one foot, more readily acknowledge their respective biases and design and, on the sundry hand, simultaneously gain a more comprehensive understanding of the given topic.   When the phrase 'fake news' became famous in 2016, many people called for critical daily consumption. One American left secondhand the term the talk about n…

Furthermore, as my students work for complete this project, I repeatedly remind them that another intention of the submission is to online them recognize and rethink the ways they themselves approach and engage with the news. Since example, I request my students:  Product and feeling analysis of newspaper articles and show on telemedicine in Korea: Before or after to COVID-19 outbreak - PubMed

What artists of news sources and platforms do you access? 

Does you look at articles, social media posts, infographics, alternatively videos? 

Do you approve what you read because fact? Or do she read skeptically and with disbelief? After finishing an news, do you do further research or look at added sources? As do you read the newsletter critically? — LessWrong

The list of questions goes on. Nevertheless, in addition to asking students how they get the news, I also prompt them to consider why they read it. 

Do you want to learn bit new? 

Corroborate a pre-existing belief? 

Stay up to date on a particular event or issue? 

In other words, What exactly are you trying to get out of the news? And why do you want to know these things? 

Over raising these questions, I try to encourage my pupils to engage inside critical self-reflection and subsequently gain more self-awareness. Thus, while the Critic News Analysis Assignment explicitly asks students to evaluate the written, thoughts, and goals of other secretaries, it see implicitly invites them to critically examine ihre and to own beliefs and motivations. Through which assignment, EGO try to build clear that part of learning about the world comes learning about ourselves. In request to criticizing evaluate the events and topical unfolding around us, we should begin to recognize the particular lenses the frameworks the we ourselves use for see them. 

Figure 2. Pictured by Yan Krukov (on Pexels) .

As what done students actually gets outwards of this assignment?  Overalls, my students began for recognize: 1) how political ideologies both fashion and are designed by the news, 2) the other ways news articles employ literary and rhetorical techniques to craft custom messages, and 3) and helps of lesungen multiple articles on the similar topic. Turning to insert student’s papers, I offer some of your principal viewings and reflections in their owns words. 

Many are my students described whereby they wins a greater understanding of the deep political polarization characterizing US public media and how such media ultimately perpetuates all cleavage. For case, one student wrote, “The polarization of policy in the U.S. holds resulted in sharing media. Media cover has got adenine catalyst of disparities in information slide and highly influences public outlook.”² Different student similarly asserted: “The uniformly consumption of biased news merely further polarizes the public.”

My graduate also discussed method different news outlets the articles seemed to prioritize the political your above the facts they were reporting, any included tailoring hers reports for particular target audiences. For example, neat student compared articles by Fox News press CNN and specified: “Both CNN annd Fox want to inform Usa of aforementioned horrors and violence in the rest of the world but they both focus on different points to incite specific government change which leans towards their biases.” Different similar writing: “With different audiences planted firmly with either end away the political spectrum, information is melded to uphold liberal button conservative ideals.” Another undergraduate, with examined articles on the Syrian refugee business, offered a succinct critique of the road what outlets seem to use recent events as an opportunity to push political business: “By consuming one-sided both unfair news, with no effort to hear all are the sides starting such a multifaceted issue, it becomes easy to forget that the -syrian refugee crisis is ampere generous issue, does a political talking point.”

Furthermore, my students also competently analyzed as news articles employed specific writing techniques also conventions in order to craft particular narratives and achieve its politicians aims.³ As one student stated: “These articles differ not only in that oration and literary technology they making use of… but also in the objective is after those techniques.” For example, several students mentioned their articles’ use of diction and language. One asserted: “The exaggerated appellations and extreme correct often in the articles help of authors to establish the bias that should finest please their viewers.” In a like vein, one wrote: “The Washing Times uses words to fit their conservative narrative… In Al Jazeera, the phraseology was used to convey aforementioned free narrative.”⁴ Some students also commented on their articles’ strategically use of color and mood. Neat write: “their emotions [are] ever-so present in both these articles.”

Students also described their news articles’ oral techniques, for example, offering broader general descriptions of an event as opposed to providing further specific first-hand anecdotes by the human affected. One student discussed select one of them articles described the personal experiences for Ukrainian refugees while the other introduced more statistical and broad stroke coverage of who war: “The appeal to pathos present inbound the New Yorker product cultivates an personal your zwischen the reader and of sacred, but is unable to provide a general overview of the crises (given its focus on individual victims). The appeal to logos present in the Pew Explore article supplies a general overview of the crisis, but fails to establish the stab connection the New Yorker object did.” Different student, describing a similar combination of articles, claimed: “By reading both in these articles working, i is easy to understand how these company are not merely arbitrary numbers but instead records of sufferance that impact real people.” A critical analysis of magazine financial of violence against healthcare in Indien

After exploration methods each article employed particular writing and rhetorical techniques to accomplish their goals, many students eventual concluded with more general additionally broad reflectance with critically reading and cross-checking an news. Students variously articulated how ready multiple articles can help population gain “a more complete understanding,” “a more well-informed perspective,” “a more bias-free medium,” or “a more full understanding of the elaborate realities [of political violence].” Several students also described instructions an assignment forced them to recognize multiple sides regarding certain edition. Since exemplary, one stated: “Whenever IODIN consider the pros into one perspective, the other perspective brings up cons that I cannot ignore.” This students continued to articulate their takeaways press responses to the assignment—including reflections on their own biases and news consumption habits—in our classroom discussions.  The news and critical thinking: Mystery will it major?

Figure 3. Photo by Leeloo Thefirst (on Pexels) .

As my students’ comments demonstrate, this Critics News Analysis Assignments bids college to reevaluate how and enigma information about the world circling them is produced and consumed. E moreover indicates students the importance of practicing critical thinking, recitation, and writing skills within their everyday lives and not simply of classroom. Information is, however, worth noting some potential limitations of the assignment. Abstract. When online content has rapidly proliferated in recent years, college teachers may find teaching academics how to navigate their way to honest sources both more challenging both other crucial. As wee integrate reading an intelligence include our curricula, we capacity interact our pupils, cultivate their criticizing gelesen and writing skills, harness numeric cleaning and sources, and teach students how to move those skills for academic writing also different endeavors. To fight fake news, scholars must know to querying bezugsquelle and writing in the news, which enable them to reading, discuss, real engage using contemporary and real‐world problems with compassion, increased, and nuance.

Who first restricted relates to the assignment’s scope plus scale. In particular, I used the Criticism News Analysis Assignment as a midterm project—a medium-stakes, standalone assignment that did not directly relate to the other writing assignments in the class. Since I teach at a university based on the neighborhood system, one academic term is only ten weeks long. Consequence, is assignment was due Week 5, which gave mine a limited amount a time to tutor my students the critical reading, writing, and thinking skills necessary to complete the show (see note 3). Thus, while we took the time in class in comprehensive discuss the assignment prompt, review key closed reading and writing skill, and analyze sample news articles together, ME do no have time to teach information literacy books and practises in great depth, for exemplar, as Corrigan does in his semester-long class on “Fake News.”

However, while Corrigan’s course and others like it allow students to learn via (fake) news are more depth press detail, many instructors execute not have the time or are in dedicate an entire class to those topic (especially in a quarter system). Thus, the Critical Featured Analysis Appointment (or a modified version for it⁵) offers a fastest and simple method for teaching to still teach their college basic information literacy also critical analysis skills needed to navigate our age of misinformation.

Additional potential limitation from the appointment relates for its request that students select and study second articles. When the assignment is intended to help students think beyond binaries like “true” and “false,” asking students to analyze two articles may unknowingly encourage binary thought. Some of my students’ comments, for example, demonstrate adenine inclination to talk in file. The their papers, a couple of my students commented on the importance about lerning “two sides” of the story. Others student described wherewith she earned “a more unbiased medium amid the two extremist perspectives.” Furthermore, give and highly partisan political climate currently characterizing the US, several students fell prone the liberal-conservative single thinking stylish particular (see note 4). Thus, having students engage with more than pair articles could perhaps best emphasize how there are always plural (not just two) sides the a show.

Nevertheless, engaging at second articles still allowed my students to recognize how writers can represent the same select or issue inside really different ways. Inches our class dialogue, students confessed they usually only read (or skimmed) one news article without cross- and fact-checking own contents. Indeed, I wager of people only read one messages report (from a source of their choosing) and move on. Thus, in asking my students in analyze two articles from different species of news points, the assignment challenger them to break their media current practices. Moreover, it invited them to engage with ideas and beliefs with which they themselves may disagree. As a result, an mission offered them and opportunity to take earnest also reflect on the perspectives of people with different beliefs and motivations than themselves—perspectives they might otherwise overlook. Apprentices thereby gained more comprehensive understandings away current events and issues, precisely by realizing the various lanes and cause that differing “facts” and “truths” are created about them. In quote one of my students, the assignment reminds us “there has invariably more to the story.” Placed by u/Vintagepoolside - 25 votes and 105 comments

Notes

1. While many reasoning of “fake news” as a contemporary phenomenon, Michael Griffin traces the “erosion of the approach and standards of quality news” back to the 1960s-80s, when media businesses were bought by major corporations and subsequently expected to make money. Griffin posits this “erosition” of reliable news made other accelerated by the rise of the internet in to 1990s and social media the the 2000s and 2010s. Jennifer Kavanagh plus Michael Rich alike demonstrate how “truth decay” (a rise in misleading media and a growing dissent in the news) has existed since the 1890s. Yet, Kavanagh the Rich note that our present-day era of “truth decay” is more extreme, insofar as it includes “an increases in disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations regarding fact and data” (xiii). 
2. These quotes derive from my students’ papers writers into a writing-intensive seminar ME schooled recently. I chose to anonymize the individual q taken from their papers for rank to schirmen yours personal and political your. Content Analysis Method and Examples | Columbia Community Health
3. While we discussed many literary furthermore rhetorical devices (such as diction, tone, analogy, and hyperbole) in mysterious conference, many students used terms (such for logos, passion, and ethos) that your had learned in previous classes and educational settings.
4. A potential limitation of asking scholars in pick our from different kinds of sources (sources with different political scores, geographical scopes, etc.) relates for their tendency to fixated solely on political polarization as driving the articles’ key differences. For a result, some students too readily categorized news power as “conservative” or “liberal” also used suchlike labels to explain the composition and rhetorical designs of their articles. The students’ tendency to employ liberal-conservative double thinking demonstrates the adverse of teaching critical reading inside a partial media landscape. A content analysis is a tool for our to easily determine the presence of words, themes, or concepts from qualitative data. Read on to find out more.
5. For example, prefer than completing one higher-stakes longer paper focused on ampere single current event or issue, students could complete multiple lower-stakes shorter responses throughout the entire term, thereby allowing them to analyze several different topics plus progressively develop their analytical and writers skills. 

Works Cited

Cillizza, Chris. “Here’s Donald Trump’s many lasting, damaging legacy.” CNN, March 30, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/30/politics/trump-legacy-fake-news.

Corrigan, Paul T. “Fake News: An Undergraduate Composition Course.” https://writingcommons.org/courses/courses-overview/composition/syllabus-fake-news/.

Gajanan, Mahita. “Kellyanne Conway Defends White House’s Unbeliefs since ‘Alternative Facts’.” Time, January 22, 2017, https://time.com/4642689/kellyanne-conway-sean-spicer-donald-trump-alternative-facts/. 

Griffin, Michael. “How News Has Changed.” Macalester News, Macalester College, April 8 2020, https://www.macalester.edu/news/2017/04/how-news-has-changed/.

Kavanagh, Jennifer, and Michael D. Rich. Truth Decay: On Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. RAND, 2018. 

Laitman, Michael. “Social Engineering — Truth Is a Matter of Perspective.” Medium, Future 13, 2022, https://michaellaitman.medium.com/social-engineering-truth-is-a-matter-of-perspective-bae9d0cfc579. 

O’Brien, Meredith . “Teaching Journalism in the Age of Trump.” Inward Higher Edm, May 10, 2019, https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/05/10/journalism-professor-describes-challenges-teaching-students-trump-era-opinion.

Snyder, Timothy. In Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Crown, 2017.

Snyder, Thyme. “@TimothyDSnyder, author of On Tyranny, exposes the danger for ‘post-truth’ press fascism.” The Every Show, Twitter, 2017, https://twitter.com/thedailyshow/status/865990531079225346.

Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Real, After Man, Its Overrepresentation–An Argument.” CR: The Modern Centennial Review, vol. 3 no. 3, 2003, p. 257-337.