Fighting Misinformation: Digital Media Literacy

Course Description
The internet brings immense power—and with it, the responsibility to distinguish truth from falsehood. This course teaches you to identify misinformation, understand how it spreads, and build essential media literacy skills to protect yourself and others in the digital age.

What You’ll Learn in the Course

• Understand the threat of misinformation and its impact on democracy.

• Explore the evolution of media and how algorithms influence what we see.

• Recognize cognitive biases and how they shape our perception of truth.

• Identify manipulated visuals and learn techniques to counter them.

• Examine fake accounts, stereotypes, and their effects in digital spaces.

• Gain professional journalistic verification skills to test credibility.

• Assess science and health news with simple, practical methods.

• Anticipate the future of misinformation and how technology plays a role.

---

Lessons

01: The Misinformation Threat — 23 min
Discover how misinformation and disinformation threaten democracy, as Ms. Susman-Peña and IREX experts explain the risks of falsehoods and prejudice.

02: The Evolution of Media and Misinformation — 27 min
Trace the history of communication technology and learn how to separate trustworthy news from misleading or false content.

03: Misinformation and the Brain — 24 min
Examine how cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and selective recall make us vulnerable to misinformation, and learn corrective techniques.

04: Seeing Through Visual Misinformation — 22 min
Analyze manipulated and reframed images, and learn strategies like Label to Disable to counter visual misinformation.

05: Countering Fakes and Stereotypes in Media — 28 min
Understand how fake accounts and stereotypes combine to amplify damage, and explore strategies to resist bias-driven misinformation.

06: Journalistic Verification Skills — 27 min
Learn professional methods of testing and verifying media, including websites, plug-ins, and tactics to evaluate journalistic integrity.

07: Assessing Science and Health News — 26 min
Explore practical tools for determining the credibility of scientific and health news, where information constantly evolves.

08: Technology, Misinformation, and the Future — 28 min
Investigate how AI and augmented reality spread misinformation and how media literacy practices can counter these threats globally.