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How Finland Is Teaching a Generation to Spot Misinformation

NWRatCon

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How Finland Is Teaching a Generation to Spot Misinformation (NYT, Subscription)​

A typical lesson that Saara Martikka, a teacher in Hameenlinna, Finland, gives her students goes like this: She presents her eighth graders with news articles. Together, they discuss: What’s the purpose of the article? How and when was it written? What are the author’s central claims?
“Just because it’s a good thing or it’s a nice thing doesn’t mean it’s true or it’s valid,” she said. In a class last month, she showed students three TikTok videos, and they discussed the creators’ motivations and the effect that the videos had on them.
Her goal, like that of teachers around Finland, is to help students learn to identify false information.

Finland ranked No. 1 of 41 European countries on resilience against misinformation for the fifth time in a row in a survey published in October by the Open Society Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria. Officials say Finland’s success is not just the result of its strong education system, which is one of the best in the world, but also because of a concerted effort to teach students about fake news. Media literacy is part of the national core curriculum starting in preschool.


If the United States were serious about educational reform, they would pay attention to this. Our societal skill at critical thinking is eroding.

After Finland, the European countries that ranked highest for resilience to misinformation in the Open Society Institute survey were Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland and Sweden. The countries that were the most vulnerable to misinformation were Georgia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania. The survey results were calculated based on scores for press freedom, the level of trust in society and scores in reading, science and math.

The United States was not included in the survey, but other polls show that misinformation and disinformation have become more prevalent since 2016 and that Americans’ trust in the news media is near a record low. A survey by Gallup, published in October, found that just 34 percent of Americans trusted the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, slightly higher than the lowest number that the organization recorded, in 2016.
 
One person's misinformation is another person's trusted New York Times article. We're all left to chose on our own.
 
I remember these type of classes when I was in high school, typically on Friday in Social Studies/History classes.

We would bring in print news articles - and discuss “Current Events”.

I don’t have experience at upper grades to speak of as a parent in 2023 yet, but I do hope this will be something that exists as my son gets older.

It is advantageous to teach children HOW to spot an author/speaker/poster motivation and recognize bias.
 
A typical lesson that Saara Martikka, a teacher in Hameenlinna, Finland, gives her students goes like this: She presents her eighth graders with news articles. Together, they discuss: What’s the purpose of the article?

Yes.

How and when was it written?

Yes.

What are the author’s central claims?

Indeed.

“Just because it’s a good thing or it’s a nice thing doesn’t mean it’s true or it’s valid,” she said. In a class last month, she showed students three TikTok videos, and they discussed the creators’ motivations

Yahtzee! Most importantly, who disseminated this shit, and why, which cannot always be ascertained, but if you cannot ascertain an immediate and obvious answer, then you know what you need to do next? Ask questions. Be a skeptic.

I don't claim to be the smartest person on this message board or even on the floor of my apartment complex, but my undergraduate degree was in mass comm, which among other things required me to take a few classes in journalism. It should be required education. Everyone should be required to take a course that requires them to go out, gather information, write articles, and then have a team of editors just rip it the **** up right in front of you not giving a damn about your feelings. They teach you to ask questions, to get answers, to get sources, to question.
 
How about you just read the article?

It’s behind a paywall.

Go ahead, knowledge won't bite you.

Note that the OP excerpt indicated that most folks in the US already know not to trust the news media.

The United States was not included in the survey, but other polls show that misinformation and disinformation have become more prevalent since 2016 and that Americans’ trust in the news media is near a record low. A survey by Gallup, published in October, found that just 34 percent of Americans trusted the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, slightly higher than the lowest number that the organization recorded, in 2016.
 
It’s behind a paywall.



Note that the OP excerpt indicated that most folks in the US already know not to trust the news media.

Define "the news media". What exactly is the media?
 
<snip> Ask questions. Be a skeptic.

I don't claim to be the smartest person on this message board or even on the floor of my apartment complex, but my undergraduate degree was in mass comm, which among other things required me to take a few classes in journalism. It should be required education. Everyone should be required to take a course that requires them to go out, gather information, write articles, and then have a team of editors just rip it the **** up right in front of you not giving a damn about your feelings. They teach you to ask questions, to get answers, to get sources, to question.
I love the suggestion. One of the things that has disturbed me so much, lately, is how obvious it is that so many people just don't think about what they are consuming. They just assume what they want to assume. You see it here every friggin' day.
 
One person's misinformation is another person's trusted New York Times article. We're all left to chose on our own.
One person's misinformation is another person's trusted truth social post
 
I love the suggestion. One of the things that has disturbed me so much, lately, is how obvious it is that so many people just don't think about what they are consuming. They just assume what they want to assume. You see it here every friggin' day.

An eye-opener for me was during Gulf War 2. I remember Gulf War 1, and I remember the coverage on CNN. Peter Arnett was allowed to report as he pleased, and being a well-sourced, highly-experienced foreign journalist, he had a deep understanding of many parts of the world. Understood the intersection of US-Soviet dynamics, as well as the interplay of various 'clients' serving both. CNN let him report in 1990-91.

By 2003, it was jingo city. Arnett, Rather, anyone who questioned the official conservative Halliburton/KBR/K-Street line was shown the door.
 
Define "the news media". What exactly is the media?

Hmm…

In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media -- such as newspapers, TV and radio -- when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly -- a great deal, a fair amount, not very much or none at all?

 
Hmm…



You are proving the point of the OP, actually, by personally being uninformed/misinformed/disinformed. I thank you for that contribution to the discussion:
"70% of Democrats, 14% of Republicans, 27% of independents trust media" What does that tell you?

A Wider Ideological Gap Between More and Less Educated Adults (Pew)​

Conservatives’ susceptibility to political misperceptions (Science)​

 
I so hate this excuse, and that is all it is. There is significant information in the OP. []bThere is Google. It's just pure laziness[/b], which is exactly the point of the thread. Too lazy to research before commenting. In 30 seconds I found three sources that were not behind a paywall, e.g.: https://headtopics.com/us/how-finland-is-teaching-a-generation-to-spot-misinformation-33894922. Or, gosh, you could subscribe.

It was your post, so why didn’t you find and include a non-subscription source?
 

How Finland Is Teaching a Generation to Spot Misinformation (NYT, Subscription)​

A typical lesson that Saara Martikka, a teacher in Hameenlinna, Finland, gives her students goes like this: She presents her eighth graders with news articles. Together, they discuss: What’s the purpose of the article? How and when was it written? What are the author’s central claims?
“Just because it’s a good thing or it’s a nice thing doesn’t mean it’s true or it’s valid,” she said. In a class last month, she showed students three TikTok videos, and they discussed the creators’ motivations and the effect that the videos had on them.
Her goal, like that of teachers around Finland, is to help students learn to identify false information.

Finland ranked No. 1 of 41 European countries on resilience against misinformation for the fifth time in a row in a survey published in October by the Open Society Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria. Officials say Finland’s success is not just the result of its strong education system, which is one of the best in the world, but also because of a concerted effort to teach students about fake news. Media literacy is part of the national core curriculum starting in preschool.


If the United States were serious about educational reform, they would pay attention to this. Our societal skill at critical thinking is eroding.

After Finland, the European countries that ranked highest for resilience to misinformation in the Open Society Institute survey were Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland and Sweden. The countries that were the most vulnerable to misinformation were Georgia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania. The survey results were calculated based on scores for press freedom, the level of trust in society and scores in reading, science and math.

The United States was not included in the survey, but other polls show that misinformation and disinformation have become more prevalent since 2016 and that Americans’ trust in the news media is near a record low. A survey by Gallup, published in October, found that just 34 percent of Americans trusted the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, slightly higher than the lowest number that the organization recorded, in 2016.
Just trust the Tucker😁
 
You are proving the point of the OP, actually, by personally being uninformed/misinformed/disinformed. I thank you for that contribution to the discussion:
"70% of Democrats, 14% of Republicans, 27% of independents trust media" What does that tell you?

That demorats appear to need additional education. ;)
 
That demorats appear to need additional education. ;)
When ignorance is willful, my friend, it is hard to counter. :D If you had followed the links, you would have learned that education tends to bolster resistance to stupidity... I mean, misinformation.
 
“Just because it’s a good thing or it’s a nice thing doesn’t mean it’s true or it’s valid,” she said. In a class last month, she showed students three TikTok videos, and they discussed the creators’ motivations

Yahtzee! Most importantly, who disseminated this shit, and why, which cannot always be ascertained, but if you cannot ascertain an immediate and obvious answer, then you know what you need to do next? Ask questions. Be a skeptic.

No, that's the part she got wrong. It shouldn't matter to you one bit regarding who wrote what or their motivations. Your goal is to determine if the claims are true and if the argument is sound. Who wrote it or disseminated it is irrelevant regarding truth.
 
"Misperceptions are beliefs that are inconsistent with the best available evidence (15), including both the acceptance of false claims and the rejection of true claims. Much of the research in this domain has focused on the former, but the latter is no less important. There is considerable evidence that citizens often hold misperceptions about factually accurate claims (16). This project accounts for both. Following work in signal detection theory (SDT) (17), we consider two aspects of belief accuracy. The first is sensitivity, which characterizes an individual’s ability to distinguish between truths and falsehoods. The second is response bias, which refers to individuals’ propensity to label all statements true—known as a truth bias—or false." Science article cited above.
 

How Finland Is Teaching a Generation to Spot Misinformation (NYT, Subscription)​

A typical lesson that Saara Martikka, a teacher in Hameenlinna, Finland, gives her students goes like this: She presents her eighth graders with news articles. Together, they discuss: What’s the purpose of the article? How and when was it written? What are the author’s central claims?
“Just because it’s a good thing or it’s a nice thing doesn’t mean it’s true or it’s valid,” she said. In a class last month, she showed students three TikTok videos, and they discussed the creators’ motivations and the effect that the videos had on them.
Her goal, like that of teachers around Finland, is to help students learn to identify false information.

Finland ranked No. 1 of 41 European countries on resilience against misinformation for the fifth time in a row in a survey published in October by the Open Society Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria. Officials say Finland’s success is not just the result of its strong education system, which is one of the best in the world, but also because of a concerted effort to teach students about fake news. Media literacy is part of the national core curriculum starting in preschool.


If the United States were serious about educational reform, they would pay attention to this. Our societal skill at critical thinking is eroding.

After Finland, the European countries that ranked highest for resilience to misinformation in the Open Society Institute survey were Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland and Sweden. The countries that were the most vulnerable to misinformation were Georgia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania. The survey results were calculated based on scores for press freedom, the level of trust in society and scores in reading, science and math.

The United States was not included in the survey, but other polls show that misinformation and disinformation have become more prevalent since 2016 and that Americans’ trust in the news media is near a record low. A survey by Gallup, published in October, found that just 34 percent of Americans trusted the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, slightly higher than the lowest number that the organization recorded, in 2016.
American teachers, the good ones, do the same thing.
 
If the United States were serious about educational reform, they would pay attention to this. Our societal skill at critical thinking is eroding.

After Finland, the European countries that ranked highest for resilience to misinformation in the Open Society Institute survey were Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland and Sweden. The countries that were the most vulnerable to misinformation were Georgia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania. The survey results were calculated based on scores for press freedom, the level of trust in society and scores in reading, science and math.

The United States was not included in the survey, but other polls show that misinformation and disinformation have become more prevalent since 2016 and that Americans’ trust in the news media is near a record low. A survey by Gallup, published in October, found that just 34 percent of Americans trusted the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, slightly higher than the lowest number that the organization recorded, in 2016.

So not trusting the news media is evidence of a lack of critical thinking skills.

For some reason that doesn't sound right.
 
American teachers, the good ones, do the same thing.
I agree, but unfortunately it is no longer a common part of the curriculum, and is actively resisted in some jurisdictions.
 
No, that's the part she got wrong. It shouldn't matter to you one bit regarding who wrote what or their motivations.

Disagree, but with context. If the facts are true, sure, I would agree that it shouldn't matter who wrote the story, but keep in mind that we are all consumers of information, both factual and not factual.

Your goal is to determine if the claims are true and if the argument is sound. Who wrote it or disseminated it is irrelevant regarding truth.

But in the real world, we are consumers of information. Propagandists produce information with a specific purpose. We should question who is giving us this information and for what purpose. I agree with you that these are not the only questions to ask.
 
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