The Teacher Bees Blog

Online Media Literacy and Social Studies

Ellen Bees -

Online media literacy is vital to help students assess the reliability of online information and think critically about what they see online. Being able to identify misinformation, fact check information using lateral reading and consider bias in online spaces is important. In the past, I have written about how to incorporate these skills in English classes, but other subject areas offer unique perspectives to exploring online media literacy.

Online media literacy is important within social studies. In a time where many companies are abandoning responsibility when it comes to addressing misinformation, all students need to develop more robust skills for assessing the reliability of online information. This is a vital part of being an engaged and responsible citizen in the modern world. During the last federal election, the Commissioner of Canada Elections warned about the risk AI posed to democracy and foreign interference through disinformation continued to be a concern. As well, AI technology is changing how the past is represented online, often in problematic ways, such as with spammers profiting from AI generated Holocaust images or AI generated history videos flooding YouTube and reducing access to well-researched information. While some assume that young people are proficient at navigating online spaces, research shows that explicit instruction in online media literacy is important for helping them evaluate online information. Social studies education can play an important role in this area.

One way that social studies teachers can engage with this topic is through teaching about sources and related research skills. Learning about primary sources is a significant part of historical thinking and the questions we might ask about primary sources are also relevant for online information. It is necessary to consider the context in which an online artifact originated and why the artifact was created. It is also important to consider whether the claims made by online artifacts are true. While this is relevant for traditional primary documents, it is increasingly essential for text, images and video found online.

An Instagram post that says "In the ancient Persian Empire, men used to debate ideas twice, once sober and once drunk. The idea had to sound good in both states in order to be considered a good idea." A painting is also attached, of four men sitting and discussing something from a book.

The social media post above presents a brief exercise in considering sources of information. This Instagram account posts works of art alongside memes to capture people's attention. Fact-checking website Snopes determined the text is paraphrasing Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian. However, Herodotus had never actually been to Persia and he was known for recording information from other people's travels, often without attribution or other confirmation that the stories were true. This demonstrates that the need to think critically about our sources of historical information is not new.

But in the digital age, there is a lot more to unpack here. First of all, this Instagram post doesn't attribute this statement to Herodotus and instead posts this "fact" uncritically. Secondly, the post is connected with a picture that is also unattributed. With some research, I found that the painting is called A Discourse Between Muslim Theologians and is attributed to the Indian painter Govardhan circa 1630. The painting was created roughly 2000 years after Herodotus would have made the preceding claim. As well, it depicts Muslim scholars talking about a religious text and stands in stark contrast to the post's claim. In fact, claiming that they would have this religious discussion while drunk seems offensive. There is an anachronism here, and while that's not necessarily a new problem in the study of history, the speed at which the Internet can allow these anachronisms to spread is a new concern.

AI can add another layer to this problem. When I completed a reverse image search to find the name of the painting, Google's AI assured me that the central figure of the painting is Al-Ghazali, a Muslim legal scholar and philosopher from the 11th and 12th century. However, I am wary of generative AI, since these models are known for generating false information that sounds statistically plausible. When I asked for a source to confirm the fact, the AI was unable to give any websites that connected Al-Ghazali with the painting, but did say the connection between the two was a "widespread understanding within Islamic art studies and among scholars of Islamic intellectual history." After repeated requests, the AI claimed the painting was actually Al-Ghazali's brother, another historical figure, before finally indicating that it had been incorrect. I eventually determined that Google's AI had been conflating a different painting that has visual similarities with the one depicted above. I am guessing that insufficient training data related to Islamic art history and a good amount of bias on the part of the model led to this mistake.

This example demonstrates how easy it is for false historical information to circulate online. It shows how social media and other online spaces can amplify anachronisms, misconceptions and bias about the past. It also illustrates how difficult it can be to fact-check information online, particularly without a robust sense of where to find reliable fact-checking tools. And importantly, this example was relatively straightforward. Other social media content, like AI generated historical videos, would be more difficult and time consuming to analyze.

Students need to know how to assess the reliability of online information, for historically oriented content and for misinformation targeted at current events. These are skills that can be taught in the social studies classroom, particularly lateral reading and reverse image searches. Lateral reading, which involves opening a new tab and checking claims or sources using a reliable source, is particularly important to practice. CTRL-F has some fantastic resources for teaching this skill.

Lateral reading and other fact-checking skills take practice and having students work at investigating the accuracy and origin of some historically oriented online artifacts can help. Below are some questions students could investigate after being presented with an online social media post, article, video or other artifact that presents a historical 'fact', some of which are true and some of which are false.

By practicing how to analyze online content, students learn to ask critical questions about online information, to assess sources of information and to fact-check information using sources that are known to be reliable. These are important skills within a social studies classroom and in the students' online lives.