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Confronting Fake News and Misinformation
Study Course Description
Course Description Statuss:Approved
Course Description Version:1.00
Study Course Accepted:27.03.2024 10:33:23
| Study Course Information | |||||||||
| Course Code: | KF_044 | LQF level: | Level 6 | ||||||
| Credit Points: | 2.00 | ECTS: | 3.00 | ||||||
| Branch of Science: | Communication Sciences; Communication Theory | Target Audience: | Information and Communication Science | ||||||
| Study Course Supervisor | |||||||||
| Course Supervisor: | Lāsma Šķestere | ||||||||
| Study Course Implementer | |||||||||
| Structural Unit: | Faculty of Social Sciences | ||||||||
| The Head of Structural Unit: | |||||||||
| Contacts: | Dzirciema street 16, Rīga, szf rsu[pnkts]lv | ||||||||
| Study Course Planning | |||||||||
| Full-Time - Semester No.1 | |||||||||
| Lectures (count) | 6 | Lecture Length (academic hours) | 2 | Total Contact Hours of Lectures | 12 | ||||
| Classes (count) | 4 | Class Length (academic hours) | 2 | Total Contact Hours of Classes | 8 | ||||
| Total Contact Hours | 20 | ||||||||
| Study course description | |||||||||
| Preliminary Knowledge: | Basic knowledge of communication, public relations or journalism. | ||||||||
| Objective: | Society in general and each individual depends on information to make their political and economic decisions, but can all information be trusted? Someone may feel that mass manipulation and disinformation are the part of ancient history, but they are becoming more prominent part of our daily lives because of increasing depdence on technology. This course addresses the renewed phenomemon of fake news, misinformation/disinformation and its related concepts; then focuses more explicitly on psychological factors that make people vulnerable to misperceptions and conspiracy theories. Students will develop sustantive expertise in how to measure, diagnose and repond to false believes in digitial environment. This course includes practical learning excercices and special simulation game to strenghten crital thinking skills. | ||||||||
| Topic Layout (Full-Time) | |||||||||
| No. | Topic | Type of Implementation | Number | Venue | |||||
| 1 | Introduction to the course. What is truth; fake news; fact cheking; cognitive bias; logical fallacies and truth sorting? | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| 2 | The psychology of false beliefs. Bias in information exposure, processing and interpretation. | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| 3 | Media coverage and fact checking. Individual assignment: Where do I get my news from? | Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| 4 | Conspiracy theories: causes and consequences. | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| 5 | Applications of misinformation. Group assignment. Case study analysis (group work 3-4 students). Students will be asked to write a case study decription and to prepare presentation about it. | Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| 6 | Rumors, social media and online misinformation. Adressing the challenge of fake news, disinformation in digital era. | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| 7 | Responses to disinformation: goes and no-goes. | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| 8 | The practical seminar in misinformation detection (visual evidence verification, geolocation, advanced search techniques). | Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| 9 | Simulation game I part. | Lectures | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| 10 | Simulation game II part. | Classes | 1.00 | auditorium | |||||
| Assessment | |||||||||
| Unaided Work: | Independent work: use of knowledge obtained at lectures and seminars in detection misinformation and choosing the possible strategy to counter it. Studying literature. Creating an analytical article. In order to evaluate the quality of the study course as a whole, the student must fill out the study course evaluation questionnaire on the Student Portal. | ||||||||
| Assessment Criteria: | The final mark depends on the invididual assignements, group assignements, practical tasks and performance in simulation game. 2 individual analytical papers: “Where do I get my news?” (20%); “The development of a myth” (40%); 1 group analysis: “Application of misinformation” (20%); performance in simulation game (20%) = 100% in total. | ||||||||
| Final Examination (Full-Time): | Exam (Written) | ||||||||
| Final Examination (Part-Time): | |||||||||
| Learning Outcomes | |||||||||
| Knowledge: | Students will learn to: - Understand the use of key concepts misinformation/disinformation, fakes news; - Understand the power of news media and information; - Identify key characteristics of real news: verification, accountability, indepencence and multiple perspectives; - Evaluate the reability and accuracy of sources in news stories and other information; - Deconstruct news stories; - Use news and other information to counter disinformation/misinformation. | ||||||||
| Skills: | - Multidisciplinary teambuilding and collaboration; - Solving complex problems; - The ability to communicate in order to generate path-breaking solutions to complex problems. | ||||||||
| Competencies: | - Ability to screen and critically review media, especially digitial media content; - individually and in groups summarize, discuss and present topic-relevant problems; - apply theoretical knowledge into practice. | ||||||||
| Bibliography | |||||||||
| No. | Reference | ||||||||
| Required Reading | |||||||||
| 1 | Vraga, Emily K., Bode, Leticia (2020). “Defining Misinformation and Understanding its Bounded Nature: Using Expertise and Evidence for Describing Misinformation.” Political Communication 37(1): 136–144. | ||||||||
| 2 | Li, Jianing, Wagner Michael (2020). “The Value of Not Knowing: Partisan Cue-Taking and Belief Updating of the Uninformed, the Ambiguous, and the Misinformed.” Journal of Communication 70(5): 646–669. | ||||||||
| 3 | Gillian Murphy, Elizabeth F. Loftus, Rebecca Hofstein Grady, Linda J. Levine, and Ciara M. Greene (2019). “False Memories for Fake News During Ireland’s Abortion Referendum.” Psychological Science | ||||||||
| 4 | Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule (2009). “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures.” Journal of Political Philosophy 17(2): 202–227. | ||||||||
| 5 | J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood (2014). “Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science 58(4): 952–966. | ||||||||
| 6 | Oscar Barrera, Sergei Guriev, Emeric Henry, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (2020). “Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics.” Journal of Public Economics 182: 104123. | ||||||||
| 7 | Marwick, Alice, and Rebecca Lewis. (2017). ”Media manipulation and disinformation online." Pages 1-56 | ||||||||
| 8 | C. Thi Nguyen. (2018). “Escape the echo chamber.” Aeon, newsletter, April. | ||||||||
| 9 | Tim Boucher (2018). “Adversarial Social Media Tactics Exposing Red Team Tricks To Empower Blue Team Defenders.” Medium. | ||||||||
| Additional Reading | |||||||||
| 1 | Deibert, Ronald J. (2019). “Three Painful Truths About Social Media.” Journal of Democracy 30, no. 1: 25–39. | ||||||||
| 2 | Read, Max (2020). “5 Theories About Conspiracy Theories.” New York Magazine, February 6. | ||||||||
| 3 | Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Ullrich Ecker, and Sander van der Linden (2020). “How to Spot COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories.” George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. | ||||||||
| Other Information Sources | |||||||||
| 1 | A Neuroscientist Explains What Conspiracy Theories Do To Your Brain (Inverse, 2019). | ||||||||
