The Future of News Literacy in a Connected World
The University of Hong Kong's "Cyber News Verification Lab" was founded in June 2016, and is arguably the first of its kind in Asia, as a focused, experiential project developing undergraduates' online verification skills. It has been hailed as "Ahead of the curve" in online and social media fact checking education by the industry's groundbreaking verification journalists. In September 2016, Meedan, (a founding partner of First Draft News including Google News Labs) joined the experiment by providing access and technical support to their open source verification platform called 'Check' The project led to a significant increase in the quality of verification techniques and critical thinking actions by students. This paper discusses the curriculum design and initial findings from the Cyber News Verification Lab implemented into News Literacy courses at HKU in Semester 2, 2016 17. The paper also outlines current developments towards a news literacy verification rating scale that arose from measures created by the instructor to assess student outcomes from the experiential project. BACKGROUND The University of Hong Kong's "Cyber News Verification Lab" experiment was first implemented via foundation undergraduate courses at the Journalism and Media Studies Center in 2016. The lab received teaching development grant funding from HKU to support innovations in curriculum design. The Cyber News Verification Lab began as an experimental side project in experiential learning, and quickly became a major component of foundation journalism classes including News Literacy, and reporting and writing classes. The partnership with Meedan saw a collaboration with HKU students' beta testing from Semester 1, 2016 17, the latest version of the Check software, with the feedback directly informing digital coders. The interface was then implemented by industry professionals in Election.Land to fact check the 2016 US Presidential polls; in CrossCheck during the 2017 French elections; and by University of Hong Kong students in the 2017 Chief Executive Elections in Hong Kong. INTRODUCTION The objective of the HKU Cyber News Verification Lab is for students to develop and apply a critical thinking lens to meet the challenges and pressure of reporting in a post web 2.0 digital age, where they: identify, analyse and deconstruct real life case studies emanating in real time from online sources, and, evaluate and report on their findings in a journalistic manner. Students simultaneously learn how to apply critical thinking skills from a News Literacy perspective, as well as practical digital skills to 'debunk and discern' online information and make sense from the constant 'noise' flowing from photos, videos and messages online. As most students at the University of Hong Kong are multi lingual, they bring with them several languages, mostly from across Asia. Students debunk social media observations from these e language cultures, and translate them into the University's medium of instruction, English. Students learn from the lab to not only debunk information, but also to discern the motivations behind dis information and the ramifications applicable to different parts of Asia. From auto mated bots used to troll unsuspecting citizens, to content farm factories, and chat app 'chain' rumors, students see how social media and technology is used to spread political and racial biases, and the nuances in different parts of the region. LITERATURE REVIEW AND DEFINITIONS This literature review will very briefly define and outline research into 'fake news' or misinformation and disinformation; media literacy and measurement scales; and, finally experiential learning theory. Fake News (for wont of a better name) This research paper considers 'motivations' behind the creation of so called 'fake news' as a key to delineate and define the misinformation and disinformation into different group types. Frank (2015, pp. 315 316) noted the "intentional dimension" is essential to consider in defining 'fake news' for example, mistakes made by a news outlet may arise from unintended human error, quite distinct from a hoax where the creators had an intention in the beginning to trick or deceive the audience (news consumers) Clare Wardle, researcher for First Draft noted the term 'fake news' made popular by US President Donald Trump, is unhelpful, in that it doesn't fully describe the complexities of the "information ecosystem" (Wardle, 2017 Par 1) Wardle (2017, par 5) has devised a typology of "problematic information" in relation to the search for a better definition and term than 'fake news' Wardle (2017, par 5) noted "they sit on a scale, one that loosely measures the intent to deceive:" 1. Satire or Parody No intention to cause harm but has potential to fool 2. Misleading Content Misleading use of information to frame an issue or individual 3. Imposter Content When genuine sources are impersonated 4. Fabricated Content New content is 100% false, designed to deceive and do harm 5. False Connection When headlines, visuals or captions don't support the content 6. False Context When genuine content is shared with false contextual information 7. Manipulated Content When genuine information or imagery is manipulated to deceive (Source: First Draft News, 2017) Media Literacy and Measurement Scales The News Literacy curriculum at the University of Hong Kong teaches News Literacy concepts to digital native students with the aim of developing critical thinking so that students can make informed decisions about the media in which they consume and participate. However, the aim of this experiential project was to extend and enrich how students put their knowledge into practice through verification and fact checking in real life, real time cases. Renee Hobbs (2004, p. 56) noted "teachers must design learning experiences that help students, as quickly as possible, to stand on their own two feet able to critically analyse and create messages in a culture that is densely saturated with an ever changing array of media messages and technology tools." Early quantitative measurements of student media literacy skills were devised in Australia and combined multiple choice and open ended questions from which evaluation instruments were created (Quinn and McMahon 1995 cited in Hobbs and Frost 2003) Hobbs and Frost (2003, p.335) adopted the Quinn and McMahon evaluation instrument in a study of ninth grade students and concluded there was a positive effect on students' literacy levels and critical thinking: "After 12 weeks of instruction, findings showed that students whose teachers integrated media literacy concepts and activities with existing curriculum outperformed those in other classes whose teachers used "off the shelf" curriculum" These initial studies led to developments of established 'grading scales' in media literacy. A more recent study by Maksl et al (2017) surveyed news media literacy levels in college students at Stony Brook University in New York. Results showed students who had taken News Literacy course had significantly higher knowledge of current affairs and were more motivated to follow the news compared to those who hadn't. However, the survey used a prepared Likert scale and multiple choice questions there was no space for 'real time' reaction to measure how students would "stand on their own two feet" as suggested by Hobbs (2004) above. This paper argues there is room for a measurement scale to focus on measuring the quality of verification steps and considerations students take when they apply their skills to real world, real time scenarios. While media literacy is a well established area of research, measurement scales need to address News Literacy competencies and critical thinking skills in a digital native, participatory, 'post truth' era. This has arguably never been more important in Asia given the implications social media can cause in political campaigns, geo politics, and society in this diverse, and highly mobile connected region. While new research is emerging in the media literacy subset of News Literacy, there are little, if any "rigorous assessment tools to gauge the impact of (news literacy) pedagogical methods" (Kajimoto, 2016, p. 148) This paper extends the focus on "pedagogical methods" to pedagogical outcomes and skills obtained (and retained) by students. Experiential Learning Kolb (1984, p. 41) defines Experiential Learning Theory as "the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience." Experiential learning is not new to higher education journalism schools such as the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Center, where all undergraduate journalism majors, (taught by academics with current or past journalism experience) must also undertake a meaningful internship in a media organisation in order to graduate. Brandon (2002, p. 62) describes experiential learning as "a process during which a person experiences an event, acquires competencies, and then compares the knowledge gained with knowledge gained in similar situations." METHODS The Cyber News Verification Lab forms part of the author's PhD research thesis. The research includes an experiential experiment, case study analysis and interviews with media experts in the form of modified Delphi iterations (where the experts can be called up to continue to advise and comment according to different stages and progress throughout the study) In the first semester of the project, the experiment was implemented using a control group, with results (available in the PhD thesis) informing the implementation of verification exercises for the second semester. The focus of this paper is on the second semester of the operation of the Cyber News Verification Lab; where the entire class of 88 students in the News Literacy focused JMSC course 'Principl