Developing Digital Detectives by Jennifer LaGarde; Darren HudginsPublication Date: 2021
This book offers easy-to-implement lessons to engage students in becoming media literacy "digital detectives," looking for clues, questioning motives, uncovering patterns, developing theories and, ultimately, delivering a verdict. The current news landscape is driven by clicks, with every social media influencer, trained and citizen journalists chasing the same goal: a viral story. In this environment, where the race to be first on the scene with the most sensational story often overshadows the need for accuracy, traditional strategies for determining information credibility are no longer enough. Rather than simply helping students become savvy information consumers, today's educators must provide learners with the skills to be digital detectives - information interrogators who are armed with a variety of tools for dissecting news stories and determining what's real and what isn't in our "post-truth world."