Even the most respected media outlet publishes sometimes a hoax, be it by accident or as a joke. But the publishing wrong news or extreme exaggeration with a clear political or economical purpose is relatively new.

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I want my students to be aware of Fakenews. We need our next generation more than ever to judge what is published, as many social media users spread news without checking for references. If we want democracy to reign our society, information is a bare necessity.

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Also picture- and video-editing has become increasingly simple and computer programs for that are now either cheap or free. Even our 8th graders can manipulate pictures, cut a head of a famous person out of one picture and put it into a completely different one.

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Beside the problematic Fakenews, the term is also frequently abused to slander news-outlets. On some topics it is almost important to discuss facts without beeing bombarded with dogmas. The power of Fakenews is additionally fueled by the phenomenon “Filterbubble”. As users search results are influenced by the information the search engine had gathered about them before, they do not get neutral results and have limited chances to question what they read on the internet.

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I want my students to check where news come from. I want them to follow a simple principle of thinking. It is borrowed from criminology and called “Qui Bono?”, which is Latin for “Who benefits?”. I want them to follow the money to search for truth. Like a study about the harmlessness of tobacco published by the cigarette-industry...

It would be nice to educate them to check numbers and statistics but I am afraid that the mathematical skills of my 8th graders are insufficient for that at this point of there education.

Qustion of the day

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Do you think that Fakenews have a high influence on politics and economics?
Do you know any particular examples?
Leave me an answer, maybe even some examples in the comments, please.

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Please also take a look at my former post of the #itb8 series

• The content of my IT-Basics Class for my next 8th-graders
• Platform before product
• All about the advertisement banner
• The might of the crowd
• Marketplaces
• Is the better shop online?
• When you click on the link...
• Teaching cryptocurrencies in school
• Own or share?
• How much costs a free app?
• The most sneaky way of marketing in the internet
• Where do the pictures in the internet come from?
• Clickworkers and Digital Nomads
• Industrie 4.0
• Who seeks finds
• Inside the Cage of the Filter Bubble
• Social Media - What does this actually mean?