Stanford Middle School Scholars Program - Media Literacy in the Post-Truth Era (Online)

Stanford Middle School Scholars Program is open to low-income students currently in grades 6 or 7 who reside in and attend school in the United States. Scholars are required to attend both the summer and academic year components of the program. Applicants should be interested in or planning to attend a college preparatory, academically rigorous high school. It's common today for youth to get their news from TikTok, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, or Twitter. More precisely, social media algorithms select news for them based on their contacts, likes, and previous online activity. This can produce a skewed information landscape, a fact that has serious implications for democracy and the institutions that support it. In this course, Scholars will develop skills to help them cut through the algorithms and find more balanced, truthful sources of information. Through the analysis of various forms of digital content, secondary readings, and in-class discussions, Scholars will learn to recognize and distinguish between misinformation (unintentional mistakes), disinformation (fabricated or deliberately manipulated content designed to fuel conspiracy theories or rumors), and malinformation (information published solely for personal or corporate interest). Beyond this, they will develop strategies for finding more reliable information from a range of sources. As a final project, Scholars will analyze how different sources have reported a given news item and help their audience to reach a reliable and verifiable understanding of it.