I am happy to share that, after an extended period of consultation and preparation, the Oceania-Asia Society for Information Integrity & Safety (OASIIS) has now been formally established.

As an elected member of the steering committee, I would like to thank the International Fact-Checking Network and the Global Fact Check Fund for their support in helping us get to this point.

We are very excited about our next step: conducting elections to form the inaugural Advisory Council. This body will provide strategic guidance and help define the organisation’s priorities in strengthening information integrity and online safety across the Oceania-Asia region.

We are now inviting media professionals, educators, researchers, and other stakeholders working on misinformation, fact-checking, media literacy, online safety, and related areas in the region to connect with us and take part in this process.

If you are interested in receiving details about the Advisory Council elections and subsequent activities, please visit our interim landing web page, https://oasiis.info, and leave your email address. Further information will be shared in the coming weeks via the email you register.

As some of you might have heard, ANNIE School Net held our very first student fact-checkers’ conference at Van Lang University in Ho Chi Minh City at the end of last year. Our conference, entitled Fact-checking Odyssey: Evidence Unleashed, brought together university and high school students from eleven institutions in seven Asian countries, namely, Hong Kong (China), Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

The two-day event was designed to foster cultural exchange and collaboration among the participating students, and it was so lovely to see them all there. They showcased their campus-based fact-checking projects, competed in online games that tested their skills, and discussed pressing issues of misinformation in their own countries. We also had a workshop on deepfake (AI-generated misinformation), visited a newsroom, and took an amazing Saigon River dinner cruise!

You can watch a recap video made by students at Van Lang University below:

On-campus fact-checking projects

The conference was a wonderful opportunity for everyone to share their unique approaches to fact-checking. We have schools making websites, broadcasting radio shows, producing social media videos and memes, publishing magazines, and even making a movie!

The students not only shared their experiences and methodologies, but also discussed the challenges they faced in their communities. It was genuinely inspiring to see the diversity of projects and the common aspiration of enhancing information integrity across the Asian region, which is what ANNIE is all about.

Jeopardy competition, workshop on AI, Ray’s blog

In addition to the presentations, we all had a great time playing some fun games, starting with the fantastic Ray’s blog that many ANNIE Connect readers are familiar with. Our main competition was a Jeopardy-style quiz show. Students teamed up with their peers from other countries and demonstrated their fact-checking techniques, critical thinking skills, and logical reasoning ability.

Even the workshop on generative AI, which was slightly more lecture-heavy, included some fun quizzes and challenging activities, as well as some relevant news and influencer videos to make it more engaging.

ANNIE's teaching philosophy is all about learning through hands-on experience. These games are designed to help students apply what they've learned in their fact-checking projects. They also provide opportunities for students to collaborate and connect with each other. By working together with others who share similar interests, I hope participants were able to make new friends and strengthen their connections.

Nuanced conversations about national stereotypes

One of the key reasons why we incorporate fact-checking into our news and media literacy education is to make students understand the limitations of this field. Lots of information we encounter in our daily lives are not easily verifiable. But even so, we believe fact-checking training prepares them to pause, reflect, investigate, share, and monitor (PRISM) when they encounter any type of statements.

In the conference, I gave each school to ponder the following statements about their own countries on the first day as a take-home (or hotel, rather) assignment. One of the highlights of the second day was for the students to give nuanced responses to these mean-spirited stereotypes and/or oversimplified views.

Hong Kong

• “Hong Kong no longer has any freedom of speech. Political expressions against the authorities can be deemed illegal.”

India

• “Corruption is the defining feature of Indian governance with no effective anti-corruption movements in the country.”

• “Caste system is practiced in reality, which is one of the reasons why many Indians aspire to live abroad.”

Indonesia

• “Bali feels like a different country. Most tourists coming to Indonesia just go to this island.”

• “Government officials in Indonesia are so corrupt. You cannot get anything done quickly unless you pay them a little bribe.”

• “Indonesian women have limited roles in society.”

• “In Indonesia, non-muslims are discriminated against at all levels from schools to offices.”

Japan

• “Most Japanese people are xenophobic. They don’t welcome immigrants.”

Malaysia

• “Malaysians view themselves primarily through ethnic lenses; all aspects of life are governed by race-based ideology.”

The Philippines

• “Filipino culture is overly influenced by Western ideals, especially by Spain and the United States (e.g. language and basketball).”

Vietnam

• “Child labour is a big issue in Vietnam. Many children have no choice but to work due to poverty.”

• “Dog meat is widely traded and consumed in Vietnam but many restaurants hide it from foreign tourists.”

Final thoughts

ANNIE’s first student conference, Fact-checking Odyssey: Evidence Unleashed, was a significant step forward for our initiative across Asia. Participants, thank you for bringing all your enthusiasm and creativity to the event. By combining presentations, interactive games, an AI workshop, an unannounced assignment, and networking opportunities, I hoped you would walk away with fresh insights and a spark of inspiration to dive deeper into your future fact-checking projects.

As misinformation and populism continue to proliferate globally, initiatives like ours are facing tougher obstacles ahead in our region. Despite the increasingly adverse environment we’re confronted with, ANNIE is determined to keep the collaborative spirit fostered during this event alive. Building a sense of community among young students—or even among educated adults—across Asia is difficult. With our diverse languages, cultures, religions, political systems, and other factors often getting in the way, it’s not always easy to find common ground.

But this conference was so much fun! The energy in the room was contagious, and it was heartwarming to see students from different backgrounds coming together with a shared purpose. The laughter and excitement reminded me why I am in the field of education, honestly.

Lastly, I would like to thank our colleagues and volunteer students at Van Lang University for their hospitality and a great organisation of the conference.

P.S.

We also created a music playlist and blasted our songs during the break. The participating students suggested songs about fact-checking or being factual in advance. We will keep it and continue to add songs :) You can listen to all of them on YouTube.

In the last two online meetings, we were lucky to have six members from ANNIE School Net share their stories about their fact-checking projects on campus.

Overall, our collective international efforts are moving forward steadily, but this kind of educational endeavour is never smooth sailing. Our two gatherings aimed to learn from each other’s experiences.

One of the challenges mentioned a few times was engaging and motivating many students, not just the enthusiastic ones, to participate actively in the project. 

Here are some good practices ANNIE identified in the meetings:

• Demonstrate how fun and satisfying fact-checking can be by showing its process and actual impact;

• Show students how learning fact-checking tools and techniques helps them develop better critical thinking and communication abilities with examples;

• Offer this experiential learning opportunity as part of elective (or compulsory) credit-bearing courses; 

• Collaborate with media professionals and news outlets for training, mentorship, and resource sharing (this approach also significantly enhances the quality and impact of student-driven fact-checking projects);

• Leverage various formats and platforms, such as radio, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc., that students frequently use;

• Encourage them to share/amplify their findings among their peers, family, and beyond and see their reactions;

• Have students translate the fact-checking stories into their regional languages and dialects (as many Asian students are multilingual).

Quick summaries of six presentations

[ANNIE Connect in April 2024]

Universitas Multimedia Nusantara (UMN) | Indonesia

Lecturer Samiaji Bintang Nusantara lecturer leads a student-driven fact-checking project as part of an elective course involving around 25 students. In the course, students learn media and digital literacy, as well as fact-checking principles and tools. As part of the project, students produced short videos, fact-checked presidential candidates, and explored Generative AI tools. 

Universitas Airlangga | Indonesia

Dr. Irfan Wahyudi has integrated fact-checking into their curriculum through a course called Digital Journalism and Big Data. Students undertook two projects, Fact Meter and Fakta Pemilu, creating websites and social media accounts to engage audiences. After the course, Irfan’s team, including interested students, decided to continue Fact Meter as a long-term project. They received training from TEMPO media professionals and plan to produce regular content.

De La Salle University-Dasmariñas | the Philippines

Associate professor Isolde Valera presented their fact-checking project involving Digital and Multimedia Journalism program students. The project, primarily conducted through campus radio Green FM 95.9, included a three-day fact-checking workshop led by Professor Rommel Lopez from PressOne PH. Through a live radio programme, some students shared their experiences and insights they gained. In the future, Green FM’s website will publish student-authored fact-checking articles after rigorous editing by the faculty.

[ANNIE Connect in May]

O.P Jindal Global University | India

Professor Venu Arora and students Sheikha Mariyam Sam and Uddantika Kashyap presented their project, Fact Check Lab, which will take advantage of the university’s student-run, faculty-supervised television and radio studios. The students discussed the challenges of the disinformation landscape in India and the need for fact-checking content. The school has held two workshops so far and discussed topics such as information monitoring, content creation, and increasing reach and impact.

Politeknik Tempo | Indonesia

Lecturer Rachma Tri Widuri and student Ariadne Khatarina Moniaga discussed their project, which began with an online orientation by ANNIE and training by speakers from Uhamka and Mafindo, teaching students how to identify hoaxes and debunk them. The six-week course also discussed prebunking. All participants received a certificate in the end. They run a fact-checking website and social media channels for publishing articles and videos. They have produced a project magazine as well.

Rumah Belajar Semi Palar | Indonesia

Leo Amurist, a project coordinator, presented a student-created pilot video discussing whether yoghurt can cause depression. Students attended fact-checking training by speakers from Bandung Islamic University (UNISBA) and Mafindo. Their approach is to learn through practice. They plan to explore other formats besides video, such as infographics and podcasts, in the future.

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In our upcoming ANNIE Connect on May 17 from 10:30 to 11:30 UTC+8 (click here to register), we will continue the show-and-tell session with three more schools and discuss how their projects are going.

Presenters

School: Politeknik Tempo (Indonesia)
Presenters: Rachma Tri Widuri, Richard Kannedy, and Ariadne Khatarina Moniaga
Brief description: Fifteen students who are members of the Korste-Politeknik Tempo’s Press Community were trained in various fact-checking tools and techniques from March 1 to May 3, 2024. They will produce their prebunking and debunking articles and videos for the website cekfakta.politekniktempo.ac.id.

School: Rumah Belajar Semi Palar (Indonesia)
Presenter: Leo Amurist, KPB Smipa Program Coordinator
Brief description: The KPB Smipa is a community-based educational initiative designed for adolescent students attending Rumah Belajar Semi Palar, which corresponds to a high school level of education. Among other things, students learn how to verify facts under the project name Teman Periksa Fakta (Fact Check Friend).

School: School of Journalism and Communication, O.P Jindal Global University (India)
Presenters: Professor Venu Arora, Sheikha Mariyam Sam, and Uddantika Kashyap
Brief description: The student-led Fact Check Lab will be hosted at The Centre for Media Development and Communication Rights at the university. At present, there are eight students who have enrolled in the program, and it is anticipated that this number will grow when the Fall semester begins in August.

If you have never registered for our monthly online gathering, you can sign up using the following link (please note that you will be registered for all future meetings, but your attendance is always optional).

https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rcuuvqzspGNBeY11cN6QZG8X6WIuVxhCO

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In this week’s ANNIE Connect on Friday, three schools, two from Indonesia and one from the Philippines, will discuss how their projects are going—achievements, challenges, students’ reactions, and other related reflections and concerns.

If you have never registered for our monthly online gathering, you can sign up using the following link (please note that you will be registered for all future meetings, but your attendance is always optional).

https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rcuuvqzspGNBeY11cN6QZG8X6WIuVxhCO

Presenters

School: Universitas Airlangga in Indonesia
Presenter: Dr. Irfan Wahyudi
Brief description: Through a course called "Digital Journalism and Big Data," students are asked to build online platforms that engage in fact-check activities. They are called Fact Meter and Fakta Pemilu (election fact). In early March 2024, ten students were recruited for the project. They went through a training session conducted by journalists and instructors from the TEMPO media. The team's current activities are managing content for the Factmeter platform.

School: Universitas Multimedia Nusantara (UMN) in Indonesia
Presenter: Samiaji Bintang Nusantara, lecturer of Digital Fact Checking and Head of the Journalism Department at UMN.
Brief description: The journalism department at UMN offers digital fact-checking as an elective course for students to face the challenges of information disorder. This year, the course focuses on the general election since voters are receiving information that is intertwined with misinformation. Twenty-five students were involved in this project.  

School: De La Salle University-Dasmariñas in the Philippines
Presenter: Isolde Eder-Valera
Brief description: Students are engaged in fact-checking through the campus radio Green FM. They went through a training session in February.

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PRISM

Before I react, I think of a PRISM:

• PAUSE: I shouldn't be hasty. I will check things out first.

• REFLECT: Am I being misled? Am I emotionally manipulated?

• INVESTIGATE: Is the content legit? Where is it from? Can I fact-check it?

• SHARE: I share my findings. I tell what I know and what I don't know.

• MONITOR: I will keep my eyes on the news. Truth builds over time.

Last summer, I briefly mentioned the mnemonic ‘PRISM’ that I started using in my curriculum.

It is supposed to help learners remember the steps they can take before reacting quickly to ‘irregistible’ information (to believe, share, etc.) and make a snap judgement.

There are many similar ideas in various countries in different languages, such as SIFT and ESCAPE in the U.S. or ソウカナ (So U Ka Na) in Japan.

So, PRISM is not unique. It is based on pretty standard, universal ideas that many news and media literacy educators use in their classrooms.

But it directly references the Pause Campaign launched by the United Nations in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The UN asked social media users to stop and think before they share information and consider the five Ws.

I thought I could go beyond the awareness campaign in my teaching by including the next possible steps after pausing and wondering about the validity of the information.

Last week, I received e-mails from other media educators in different countries asking me what I do (activities, lesson plans, etc.) in my class to discuss each step of PRISM.

Maybe because I mentioned the mnemonic in one of the media literacy mailing lists I am a member of a couple of weeks ago, or maybe because this particular graphic was adopted by some teachers for the upcoming summer workshops (which I didn’t know until I was told so by one of the media educators).

But no matter the reasons for their sudden interest, they said they particularly liked the final steps — Share and Monitor. Asking everyone to be a fact-checker is a tall order (although I do believe it’s important to teach fact-checking skills in class).

So I tell learners that it is OK to share even when their quick investigation goes nowhere. But they must indicate the validity of the claims, photos, videos, etc., is questionable and needs to be investigated.

The hope is that this way of sharing will alert other users to pay more attention. Research in cognitive science shows that ‘inattention’ can be a major factor contributing to people sharing unsubstantiated information.

Our goal in this step is that, by sharing content in this fashion, we can nudge each other to think about accuracy.

Monitoring the development of the news is another step that is often neglected. In our curriculum, we say, ‘journalistic truth is provisional.’ This last step reminds learners that truth builds over time, so discerning credible information also requires time and some effort.

The following video is a promotional preview we created for our online course on Coursera, talking about this idea of provisional truth.

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Santi has been working closely with the WHO and played a crucial role in public health communication during the early phase of the pandemic as part of the expert team that led risk communication for the COVID-19 task force in Indonesia.

Why does infodemic matter?

In July 2021, Indonesia experienced a devastating wave of the Delta variant, which transformed the country into the new epicentre of Asia’s COVID-19 crisis.

Santi and her team at Mafindo collected and clustered misinformation in Indonesia from February to July of that year and identified three misleading, and possibly fatal, narratives that could misguide people to make decisions that can be very harmful:

• COVID-19 is similar to influenza (not a serious disease).

• Hospitals were manipulating data by falsifying patients as having COVID-19 (to get government subsidies and other reasons).

• Vaccination is risky because there are always severe adverse effects following immunization (AEFI), including death.

Mafindo’s survey in 2021 showed that 61.6% of respondents expressed concerns about the credibility of information they see on the internet, while the data from Asosiasi Penyelenggara Jasa Internet Indonesia (APJII) indicated that among various hoaxes circulating in Indonesia, 6.78% of them were health-related.

In the same year, studies conducted by UNICEF in nine big cities in Indonesia during the Delta wave presented that 48% of people felt they had never encountered any misinformation in months, which suggested that many of them could not easily identify misinformation.

Santi’s work focused on health-related misinformation because, compared to other types of misinformation, such as politics, its impact proved to be devastating.

Seven steps of infodemic management

She collaborated with WHO and UNICEF to discuss the challenging issues and followed through with the essential process of infodemic management.

Step 1: Social listening to understand misinformation & public concerns

At the time, Mafindo was asked to provide a weekly digital listening report on social media conversations to gain insights into ongoing discussions among the population.

They compiled a weekly list of 10 popular hoaxes and 3 fact checks. Based on their archive, they also mapped the types of hoaxes monthly.  

She said monitoring the digital realm alone was insufficient, as conversations in the digital world spilt over into the offline world and got amplified, but social listening in the non-digital world was challenging.

Step 2: Deliver high-quality health information

The difficulty was how to transform scientifically dense health information into something understandable for the general public.

She found that effective methods include storytelling, contextualizing information in the local language, and using humour, such as funny memes.

Step 3: Apply interventions, toolkits, and methods

Mafindo developed tools such as educational cards and WhatsApp stickers that could easily reach the community and get shared. The stickers shown below targetted the elderly community, for example.

Step 4: Counter misinformation and disinformation

This is the core of Mafindo’s work, which has been a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network for more than a few years now. It involved disseminating debunks, providing training, and promoting education amid the pandemic.

Step 5: Monitor information, environment, and responses

In the weekly digital listening report, Mafindo examined trends of conversations regarding COVID-19 and vaccination issues.

They also conducted thorough content analysis on various aspects of misinformation in terms of themes, types, and tools used to debunk it.

Step 6: Support healthy behaviours and resilience to misinformation at individual, community, and societal levels

From the first month of the pandemic until October 2022, Mafindo participated in the Social Inoculation project, which utilized social media listening and social inoculation strategies to diagnose and address the impact of the infodemic related to COVID-19, routine immunization attitudes, and future vaccine acceptance in Indonesia.

In order to accomplish this, solely relying on databases and fact-checkers was insufficient. Santi said what the project did was to find trusted people within each community who could initiate conversations.

The project supplied these people with knowledge and necessary information and managed to maintain good relationships with them to enhance further communication.

Between February and April 2022, they recruited and trained medical cadres from each community, who then returned to their communities to deliver pandemic-related information and messages. They also assessed their communities' situations and deployed customized approaches while tracking behavioural changes.

Step 7: Strengthen outbreak preparedness and response

Debunking alone is not enough; prebunking is essential. The goal is not only to raise public awareness about fact-checking but also to foster resilience against future misinformation. And this relies on community engagement and community action.  

ANNIE’s take:

• The social inoculation strategies applied in the project can be extended to address other general health issues beyond COVID-19. What is important is the communication and dissemination method.

• Establishing trust within the community can be the key to success when managing the infodemic at the community level.

• Localizing educational materials and utilizing community resources are great ways to open up dialogues and build mutual trust.

• The initial process of informing the public is always challenging, especially during health emergencies such as the pandemic. However, once the conversation starts, there is a chance to get your messages across.

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The term ‘infodemic’ gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The expression, coined by the World Health Organization, refers to the overwhelming flood of information inundating our lives, which led to confusion, panic and even deaths. Just as a pandemic spreads through populations, so do misinformation, disinformation, and rumours, obscuring quality content and scientific facts.

How can we, as news and media literacy educators, equip our students and communities with the tools to navigate this complex landscape? How can we work with fact-checking organisations and people in the medical sector?

Four years ago, in 2020, the WHO convened its first ‘infodemic management’ conference (in which I was involved as one of the ‘topic masters’). Since then, I’ve been thinking about how educators and researchers can contribute to tackling the problem.

Naturally, student-driven fact-checking has been the staple of our operation at Annie Lab; we worked with many other fact-checking organizations globally through the “CoronavirusFacts Alliance” by the International Fact-Checking Network. We were also invited to become a member of WHO’s Vaccine Safety Net.

I am now in talks with the School of Public Health under the medical school at our university, and we have been brainstorming about possible collaborations in the area of Infodemic Management.

The WHO has produced many materials that we educators can adopt and adapt in this field, such as free online courses, operational toolkits, competency frameworks, and guidebooks.

ANNIE Connect on March 15

So, to discuss and develop ideas about what news/media literacy educators can do, this week’s ANNIE Connect on March 15 (10:30 - 11:30 GMT+8) switches gears from gamification to infodemic management.

We will have a guest speaker, Santi Indra Astuti, a lecturer at the Faculty of Communication Science, Islamic University of Bandung (UNISBA), Indonesia, and a member of ANNIE’s Advisory Council.

Santi has been working closely with the WHO and played a crucial role in public health communication during the early phase of the pandemic as part of the expert team that led risk communication for the COVID-19 task force in Indonesia.

She also spearheaded the Social Inoculation 2.0 Research Project, developing the ‘Vaccine Communication’ intervention model to combat Covid-19 misinformation. She conducts training for healthcare workers, health cadres who support community health programs in Indonesia, and community leaders.

If you have never registered for the group Zoom link, you can register using the following link (please note that you will be registered for all future meetings, but your attendance is always optional).

https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rcuuvqzspGNBeY11cN6QZG8X6WIuVxhCO

See you all online on Friday!

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In our next monthly gathering on Feb. 16 (10:30-11:30 GMT+8), we are continuing our exploration of gamifying news/media literacy education.

We will have guest speakers from Malaysia’s Arus Academy. They will demonstrate their newest creation called Follow Me, a tabletop card game designed to teach/learn media literacy.

Here’s what David Chak, a co-founder and the curriculum director at ARUS (and also one of ANNIE’s Advisory Board members), said about it:

Follow Me card game is a media literacy game that is created to teach players aged 10 and up, including educators and students, about media literacy.

This game is designed with education in mind, as it comes with a lesson plan and ways to customize the gameplay to fit different audiences.

The game puts players in the shoes of media operators and pits them against each other in the ever-complex world of operating media to bid for followers.

I haven’t had a chance to play with it, but the idea is intriguing. It is certainly on my to-do list during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday next week!

For those of you who would like to join our group on Feb. 16 (10:30-11:30 GMT+8) and have never registered to get the group Zoom link before, you can register through the following link.

(Please note that you will be registered for all future meetings, but your attendance is always optional).

https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rcuuvqzspGNBeY11cN6QZG8X6WIuVxhCO

A Happy Year of the Dragons if you’re living in a country where you celebrate the Lunar New Year with the Chinese Zodiac symbols!

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Gamification is not new to journalism training or news/media literacy education. 

Story-based simulations such as BBC’s iReporter are one of the common methods, which was the reason why we focused on this technique in the recent workshop.

Coupled with incentives like points/scores, badges, and leaderboards, games could potentially make it easier for educators to naturally motivate students to be more proactive in their pursuit of knowledge. 

Gamification can take a variety of forms. It can be offered online or offline. It can be guided or self-paced. It can be part of lectures, take-home assignments, or extracurricular activities.

When executed in a fun, engaging manner, educational games and gamified classrooms can achieve a lot.

Over the years, we have seen many gamification attempts (and tried some) in our field (news literacy, fact-checking, misinformation, social media usage, etc.). Here is a list of some notable ones, some of which we also mentioned in our past newsletters. 

• La Sala de Escape [Escape Room] by Chequeado (Argentina)

• Cranky Uncle by John Cook (Australia)

• Libertas Veritas: Freedom and Truth by Deakin University (Australia)

• Troll Factory by Yleisradio Oy [Finnish Broadcasting Company] (Finland)

• To Share or Not by SmartNews (Japan)

• Are You Yang Bijak? by Malaysia Information Literacy Education (Malaysia)

• CheckTalk by Community Media Foundation (South Korea)

• Bad News, Go Viral, and Harmony Square by Cambridge University (UK) 

Last week, in our monthly ANNIE Connect online meeting, three guest speakers from Japan’s Classroom Adventure — Noa Horiguchi, Hinata Furukata, and Zentaro Imai — demonstrated Ray’s Blog, an immersive mystery game designed to teach fact-checking skills. 

Recap: Ray’s Blog 

Unlike most web-based games in this field, Ray’s Blog is most effective in a face-to-face setup with at least one facilitator in the classroom.

To solve the mystery, players need to form a group of at least three or four because they need to go back and forth between multiple browser windows and apps such as X (formally Twitter), YouTube, and Google Maps for smooth gameplay.

The game starts with an intriguing intro video, followed by a physical handout — a mysterious envelope containing a cryptic letter from Ray with the message, ‘Come Find Me’, a name list, and a photograph with a QR code in the back that leads to his blog. 

To find out who Ray is, players must read the blog entries carefully, find clues, and interact with another character, Zito, through a chat app. They need to employ verification tools and fact-checking skills to solve puzzles along the way. 

You can watch the entire demo in the following video:

ANNIE’s take:

• The use of interactive chat makes it easier to keep the learners engaged. The game encourages attention to detail and careful research, naturally making them recognise what skills they need (and are lacking). 

• It is great to see that the game does not reward speed while the emphasis is kept on checking the validity of claims and accuracy of information (we have seen many educators misguidedly use a speed competition to gamify their fact-checking class in the past).

• This game works well offline, but in its current format, it is rather hard to implement effectively online because handling multiple browser tabs and/or apps on a mobile device (or even on a desktop) may not be easy for one person. Virtually working in a group may help, but it is still not easy to share multiple screens and switch between them regularly.

Ray’s Blog is a well-rounded teaching material to introduce basic fact-checking skills, and we highly recommend it. If you’re interested in trying it out in your class or have any questions, feel free to contact Classroom Adventure at info@classroom-adventure.com.

Challenges

No teaching material is perfect. We all know it is hard, if not impossible, to develop a pedagogy, let alone a game, that is universally effective. 

Some of us like competition; others don’t bother about winning all that much. Some like shooting games; others prefer puzzles. Some can spend hours building a virtual city; others get bored after playing the same game for 10 minutes.

After all, people (learners) have different tastes and interests. Ray’s Blog will surely work great for some, but perhaps not all. In this sense, the selection of news stories and topics included in the game also makes a difference. 

It was originally created for students in Japan, and it shows even in the English version.

For example, although the ageing society (the first news story in the game) may be an important issue and discussed frequently in some developed nations, it is not a familiar problem for students in many other countries in the world — half of the world’s population is under 30 after all, according to the UN. 

Football (soccer) is universally popular (another news item to be checked in the game), but even so, not every student cares about the sport.

Yes, an imaginary school teacher tweeting about an unannounced pop quiz may be a common interest for students (another scenario in the game), but this limits the scope of real-life fact-checking that the game is trying to encourage.

It is something to keep in mind if you’re an educator who is interested in using Ray’s Blog in class. You may want to tell your students that it is hard to verify information in the areas you’re not familiar, so they should take time to investigate all aspects.

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A Happy New Year! I hope you’re getting off to a good start in 2024!

For us, it is going to be a busy year with two key projects — ANNIE School Net (school-based fact-checking newsroom projects with 16 educational organizations in 7 Asian countries) and our increasing effort in tackling public health misinformation with experts in the medical sector and beyond.

In our first monthly gathering on Jan. 19 (10:30-11:30 GMT+8), we will have guest speakers from Japan’s Classroom Adventure. They will demonstrate their online game called Ray’s Blog. Many of us (me and a few ANNIE Advisory Council members) played it together last month, and we were impressed with its design.

The engaging storyline naturally nudges players to use various online tools to find information, investigate claims, and check the veracity of various data — all essential skills in fact-checking — while solving the mystery, ‘who is Ray?’

Classroom Adventure is a startup founded by university students, and the game clearly shows. In my opinion, it resonates with our students’ generations unlike some other gaming efforts I have seen in this space.

Interested? The embedded clip below is a 5-minute preview of what’s coming in our meeting. Some parts of the video are in Japanese, but you can turn the subtitles on. Their demonstration will be in English, and as you can see in the video, the entire game is also in English.

Just in case, here’s the registration link (if you haven’t done so yet, that is).

https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rcuuvqzspGNBeY11cN6QZG8X6WIuVxhCO

Have a good weekend, and see you online on Jan. 19 (10:30-11:30 GMT+8)!

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As a partner organisation in this year’s Trusted Media Summit in Singapore, ANNIE conducted a one-day, pre-conference workshop on ‘using simulations to teach news and information literacy.’

A total of 43 participants, including myself, from 11 Asian countries joined the workshop. We were divided into groups and built a prototype of simulations that could be used in the classroom. 

The goal was to create a fun and engaging activity that teaches learners how to become responsible content creators and social media influencers.

Masato Kajimoto, our director and a journalism professor at the University of Hong Kong, and Yvonne Chua, our Advisory Council member and an associate professor of journalism at the University of the Philippines - Diliman, led the event as facilitators. 

Why content creators? 

Various media research around the world indicates younger generations primarily get news from video-based platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Surveys also show more children dream of becoming content creators than astronauts or medical doctors in different countries, including many in Asia.

Some of the articles shown in Masato’s slides were:

• Kids now dream of being professional YouTubers rather than astronauts, study finds (CNBC)

• 'YouTuber' is top 5 job for elementary schoolchildren (The Korea Times)

• Japanese Kids’ Dream Jobs of the Future: Pâtissier and YouTubers (HR in Asia)

• Top 10 Popular Dream Jobs in 2023 in India (The Times of India)

• How to make money on YouTube in 2023? (The Times of India)

• So, Your Kid Wants to Be a YouTuber. Should You Let Them? (PC Magazine)

Yvonne discussed how social media is the primary news source in many Asian countries, citing the report by We Are Social.

She also talked about the significant amount of time internet users spend on YouTube and TikTok — more than any other social apps and services in 2022, according to the same report.

Teaching with simulations

When executed well, interactive simulations can provide a fun and engaging learning environment.

The idea of the workshop was to develop a scenario-based choice game to teach our students — many of whom aspire to be content creators and social media influencers — how to be responsible for their content and behaviours.

Masato showcased a few such simulations used in news and media literacy education.

BBC iReporter, for example, is a sophisticated interactive game that simulates some situations that a newly recruited news reporter encounters. The embedded video below is a short demo of him playing BBC’s iReporter.

BBC’s simulation game aims to teach journalistic concepts like balance, fairness, accuracy, speed (when covering breaking news), and impact.

Another example he mentioned was a newsroom simulation created by ARUS Academy in Malaysia.

The key idea is to develop stories in which students are faced with choices to weigh values, anticipate consequences, and make difficult decisions so that they can draw lessons from the simulated experiences.

Developing simulations — topics, challenges, and choices 

During the workshop, participants were divided into groups and had two brainstorming sessions.

In the first session, each group was asked to figure out what kind of topics and concepts they would like to include in their simulations.

Here’s what the two facilitators said before we submitted our list: 

• Remember that our goal is to teach how to become a responsible content creator / social media influencer

• Business models? Misinformation? Hate speech? Harmful content? Copyrights? Privacy? Transparency? Comment moderation? Obscenity? Other ethical issues?

• You will need to make a simulation slide in the afternoon. Try to limit your focus to 2-3 ideas and dig deeper

• Are there any real case studies and examples in your country that could possibly address those topics and concepts?

In the second session, each group was asked to make 1) a rough storyboard to illustrate the overall storyline and 2) draw a decision tree, mapping all the choices students would face in the simulation. Yvonne and Masato asked:

• What is the story? Is it in line with the learning objectives?

• What choices and challenges should learners need to face? 

• What are the consequences?

After the two brainstorming discussions and feedback sessions, each group was asked to create a set of slides that could be used in class when running the simulation. This final stage was also a contest. 

Winners

On the final day of the conference, the seven groups presented their slides before the best projects (contest winners) were announced. Yvonne and Masato have chosen two simulations as winners. 

The first winning group’s story revolved around Mr. X, a YouTuber specialising in politics who is making videos for the upcoming election.

Throughout the simulation, Mr. X would encounter various choices, such as how to deal with government funding and uncorroborated claims. The main concepts incorporated in this simulation were transparency, trust, and misinformation.

The other winning group’s simulation focused on business models and tax issues. The story was based on an influencer in the crypto industry who has to decide whether or not to promote a specific crypto company.

The scenario also involved the importance of verifying information sources and even knowledge about a taxation system.

ANNIE’s take:

The goal of the workshop was to develop simulations to teach future content creators, but this idea seems to have been difficult to understand for many participants.

Some groups simply created a story without adding challenges, choices, and different decision-based outcomes along the way. These stories do teach important ideas, but they were not simulations.

Other groups produced simulations, but their stories put the protagonists (i.e. students) in the shoes of the audience, not the content creator.

Their projects were mostly about teaching how to responsibly consume and share information from the influencers rather than becoming a responsible influencer himself/herself.  

The two winning groups, on the other hand, touched on important issues in social media content creation, and their simulation ideas were both practical and engaging.

But even so, this workshop revealed that it is not at all easy for educators to imagine being influencers, let alone the issues and challenges they face.

After all, most teachers and journalists are unfamiliar with the world of content creation and social media influencers.

They may understand communication theories and newsroom practices very well, but such knowledge doesn’t necessarily translate into lesson plans and educational simulations targeting this new generation of media personalities whose styles are very different from the ones in the traditional mass media.

It was also interesting to see how participating educators and journalists naturally reverted back to the idea that students are the audience and users of social media — a more straightforward way to develop a media literacy scenario —  instead of thinking about them being the creators of information.

For this reason, Masaot says if ANNIE has a chance to give a similar workshop, he will make sure to invite some social media influencers as either co-instructors or participants. He will also invite students to work together with the educators and journalists.

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We are proud to announce the launch of ANNIE School Net and its campus fact-checking project in collaboration with 15 educational institutions from various Asian countries (a couple more schools might join later this year).

This endeavour, outlined below, signifies our collective effort to empower students with analytical skills, logical reasoning, and effective content creation by employing digital tools and techniques used in journalistic fact-checking.

Key objectives and activities

• Establish student-driven, fact-checking newsrooms at school by mid-2024.

• Build a sustainable operation that students could lead in the long run, even after the initial experiment ends at the end of 2025.

• Foster critical thinking and information verification skills through experiential learning opportunities.

• Investigate questionable claims about socially important topics such as public health, food safety, racism, elections, the environment, and others.

• Make the fact-checking content publicly available on various platforms.

• Regularly produce fact-checking content beginning mid-2024, following the six-month preparation period.

Participating schools

• India: M.O.P. Vaishnav College for Women | O.P Jindal Global University (Centre for Media Development and Communication Rights)

• Indonesia: Universitas Airlangga | Politeknik Tempo | Rumah Belajar Semi Palar | Bandung Islamic University | Universitas Multimedia Nusantara

• Japan: CLARK Memorial International High School (クラーク記念国際高等学校)

• Malaysia: SABK Maahad Ehyak Diniah Islamiah | New Era University College

• Philippines : De La Salle University Dasmariñas (Green FM) | Marikina Science High School (The Shoeland x Ang Sapatusan)

• Thailand:  British International School of Phuket

• Vietnam: Van Lang University | University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City)

Why fact-checking newsrooms?

This project is modelled after a few fact-checking initiatives involving students.

Our own Annie Lab at the University of Hong Kong is naturally one of them. FactRakers at the University of the Philippines is another. The “Is this legit?” project by MediaWise in the United States is also our inspiration, especially for high school students.

The pedagogical method we adopt here is often called a ‘teaching hospital’ model, where students get trained and work as fact-checkers to inform the public.

The idea is that just like medical students learn essential skills by practising medicine in a school-affiliated hospital while still studying, we believe our students will benefit greatly when they engage in an environment that simulates real-world media outlets.

Of course, establishing something like this presents some practical challenges, and that’s where our network’s support system helps. This will be a collaborative effort through which students and educators learn from each other.

We will report how our project is going once in a while through this newsletter.

If you’re a media educator interested in getting involved, please let us know via e-mail (contact@annieasia.org).

[About Annie Lab]

Annie Lab is a student-driven, fact-checking newsroom established in 2019 by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong and ANNIE (Asian Network of News & Information Educators).

Annie Lab is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). It is committed to political non-partisanship, fairness, accuracy, transparency, and professional rigour required by IFCN. It also became a member of the Vaccine Safety Net by the World Health Organization in November 2023.

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In November 2023, Annie Lab became a member of the Vaccine Safety Net (VSN) established by the World Health Organization.

The VSN is a global network of websites that provides quality information on vaccine safety. It consists of a diverse group of member institutions that are located in various countries around the world.

Annie Lab received WHO's invitation in mid-October and was granted a membership the following month. In its assessment, the United Nations agency said it was impressed by Annie Lab's "strong focus on public health" and its "commitment to fact-checking."

Annie Lab is the first member to be included in Hong Kong. Other members include the National Immunization Programme under the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health.

"This accolade acknowledges Annie Lab's commitment to providing reliable, science-based information about vaccines," said Ruby Yang, the interim director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC) at the University of Hong Kong, where Annie Lab operates. "[It is a] remarkable achievement," she added.

Annie Lab is a student-driven, fact-checking newsroom on campus. Established in 2019 by JMSC and an educational, not-for-profit organization, ANNIE (Asian Network of News & Information Educators), Annie Lab investigates a wide range of topics.

Since the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, its student reporters and faculty editors have looked into various misleading claims and inaccurate news reports about vaccine safety.

Annie Lab is also a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). It is committed to political non-partisanship, fairness, accuracy, transparency, and professional rigour required by IFCN.

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In our last ANNIE Connect study group on Nov. 17, our guest speaker Rukshana Rizwie, a project manager at Watchdog in Sri Lanka, shared with us how Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark can be an inspiration in tackling misinformation.

She presented a 10-point checklist — an abbreviated version of Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit:

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?

2. Does the source make similar claims?

3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?

4. Does this fit with the way the world works?

5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?

6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?

7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?

8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?

9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?

10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

We discussed that these questions are very useful for professional fact-checkers to go through when evaluating claims.

Meanwhile, this method may also be considered too convoluted for our students and regular news audiences to put into practice, especially if the target learners are the youths or elderly. 

ANNIE’s take: 

• Some chapters in Sagan’s book can be great reading assignments for university students.

• Giving a set of mental checklists is a great way to encourage students to go through a discerning thinking process.

• Perhaps the simpler version of the same idea is the SIFT method by Mike Caulfield, who recently published a book titled “Verified” with a tagline: “How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online”

Dissect: AI-powered news text analysis tool 

Rukshana also demonstrated Dissect, an AI-powered mobile APP developed by Watchdog that can critically examine articles on the Internet.

All of us were very impressed by this sophisticated app and its potential as a teaching tool.

Dissect can scan, read, and summarise web articles. It generates not only an overall summary but also identifies each claim made, its source, and the assumption underlying each claim.

The app also detects the names, institutions, and entities mentioned in the article. 

If there is a corresponding Wikipedia page for them, it also links to the page for quick reference. ​​

Furthermore, Dissect creates a timeline of events in the article when different dates are mentioned in the article.

The great news for educators is that the Dissect app will soon be available for you to try on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

At the moment, it can be used only for English-language text, but Rukshana said Watchdog is adding more language support in the near future.

ANNIE’s take:

• Deconstructing news content in this fashion is a common method in news literacy education. Dissect automates some of the steps we encourage our students to go through. 

• It should be used after learners have developed a sufficient level of analytical mindset — just like how we tell learners to use calculators after mastering basic mental maths skills. 

• We cannot wait to play with it! Hopefully, it will become widely available soon!

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I recently had a couple of occasions to discuss “an increasing threat” of mis- and disinformation to democratic systems with policymakers, academics, civil society activists, journalists, and educators in Asia at some conferences.

I was a bit taken aback by the alarmist commentaries some people seem to believe genuinely, even though the actual impact and influence of mis/disinformation is extremely complicated to pin down, if not impossible.

For years, many researchers have warned about the short-sightedness of narrowly focusing our attention on online falsehood (the advent of generative AI has lately exacerbated that conversation) and, consequently, missing the bigger picture.

Misleading rhetorics, fallacies, one-sided narratives with cherry-picked or made-up facts, nonsensical squabbles, hateful scaremongering, smear campaigns, doctored ‘evidence,’ unsubstantiated rumours, voodoo medical treatment . . . whatever we see as “threatening” now have always been with us for centuries.

After all, it was more than 300 years ago, in 1710, when Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels (which itself was a satirical book lampooning human nature — I majored in English and American Literature in college 🙂) wrote:

“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it,” and “As the vilest writer hath his readers, so the greatest liar hath his believers.”

Key takeaways

Here are three main points I and some other colleagues made at those conferences:

1. Misinformation thrives only when there’s already a condition for it to grow. The organic spread of false claims is often a symptom of polarisation, inequality, hate, mistrust, and other issues that already exist in our society. It reflects who we are, how we think, and what we do, not the other way around.

2. Disinformation campaigns through CIBs (Coordinated inauthentic behaviours) and ANs (Adversarial Networks) are pretty visible, but again, their actual impact on public sentiments and opinions is hard to discern. Other factors could easily play much more significant roles. Say, for instance, gerrymandering has far more impact on the outcome of elections than any disinformation efforts.

3. Identifying and producing quality information is much more difficult than debunking misinformation. For example, it’s easy enough to investigate a claim about COVID-19 vaccines making people magnetic; it’s much more challenging to fully understand possible side effects and potential risks of vaccination with sufficient medical science knowledge.

In social science, we can’t always have control and treatment groups. There is no parallel world where we can observe the same election without mis/disinformation, and compare it to our world so that we can reasonably estimate the real effect of what mis/disinformation does to us and our society.

But I do believe our conversations surrounding mis/disinformation must still be more evidence-based. Moderation and intervention efforts may alleviate the symptoms, but if they don’t necessarily cure the root cause of the problems, shouldn’t we also discuss how to tackle the cause at the same time?

Reducing and removing hateful online comments is not the same as eradicating hateful thinking and the toxic culture we have in the offline world, right? The former cannot be achieved unless we deal with the latter.

In news literacy education, fact-checking skills are, of course, essential, and I love teaching them. But ultimately, we should go beyond that and allocate more efforts and resources to teaching how to identify and develop quality content.

Especially in Asia, it is important to do this in our own languages because the sources of internationally recognised, high-quality information are predominantly in English, the language most people in our part of the world don’t speak or understand.

ANNIE Connect on Nov. 17

Our next online ‘study group’ gathering will be held on 17 November 2023 at 10:30 a.m. HKT (UTC+8).

This month, we will have a guest speaker from Watchdog, a multidisciplinary team of journalists, researchers, and software engineers in Sri Lanka, tackling misinformation with a unique approach.

Their project manager, Rukshana Rizwie, will discuss how she looks at the works of Carl Sagan and brings in philosophical razors when thinking about misinformation. She will also demonstrate an AI-supported tool that Watchdog developed, which, I believe, many journalists and educators in this field would be interested.

Are you new to our group and want to join the event? Everybody is welcome in our monthly get-together. Please register using the link below (if you haven’t done so yet, that is):

https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rcuuvqzspGNBeY11cN6QZG8X6WIuVxhCO

As usual, the above link includes automated invitations for our future meetings, but we will cancel our December gathering (it’s the holiday season), and we will probably go back to our original time slots (14:30 HKT, third Friday of the month) starting from January 2024.

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Quite expected by many in our field, a flurry of misinformation has been circulating globally in different languages since Hamas launched a surprise attack in Israel earlier this month.

The deadly conflict seems to be escalating every time we learn about the latest developments in the media. Along with news photos and videos from the war zones that are sometimes unsettling, we are constantly exposed to a large volume of dramatic and sensational images that are often unrelated or doctored.

Naturally, this situation presents a teaching moment for all of us who discuss fact-checking, misinformation, and news literacy in class.

The following articles, for example, are the ones I am thinking about using as reading assignments next week:

• Propaganda, deception, and fake news in the Israel-Hamas conflict (Al Jazeera)

• Who's behind Israel-Gaza disinformation and hate online? (BBC)

• Amid images and news of actual war, false and misleading claims about Israel-Hamas thrive (Poynter)

• Israel-Hamas war: Fact-checking online misinformation (Reuters)

• Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding social media. Here are the facts (AP)

• A flood of misinformation shapes views of Israel-Gaza conflict (Washington Post)

Images may not be real, but associated claims could still hold some truth

At the same time, though, we should not dismiss fabricated images as total nonsense with no bearing.

In my more than ten years of teaching news literacy and fact-checking, I learned that media professionals and the audience don’t always think or react in the same way to debunking efforts.

For instance, let’s suppose a photo of children being crammed in a cage is circulating with a claim that it shows hostages captured by terrorists or soldiers. Investigating the authenticity of such pictures can be difficult, but not impossible.

In this hypothetical scenario, let’s say we can establish with evidence that the image is a deleted scene from a TV drama that was not used in the broadcast.

We can safely say the viral content is misinformation and very manipulative because the children’s image naturally stirs our emotions and influences our perceptions toward the group that is accused of using children as hostages in the conflict.

But here’s the dilemma. Even if we can categorically prove that the photo has nothing to do with the ongoing war, it does not mean children have not been kidnapped or kept in a cage. It could still be happening. It’s just that the photo in question does not show it, and that is all.

Professional fact-checkers are careful about telling the audience what they can substantiate and what they cannot. However, not all media consumers pay attention to the distinction.

Many of us hang on to the overall impression we get and may think that fact-checkers are debunking the whole premise of the claim. In this case, people may think that because the photo is fake, the news about child hostages is also bogus or exaggerated.

Even if fact-checkers can prove a picture of body bags or a video of cruel killings is falsified, that does not mean the actual situations are less brutal or different. The reality could still resemble the misleading images. After all, it is a war, and people are killing each other.

This is what we educators need to be careful about. Our tendency to look at everything in a dichotomy — good vs. evil; fake vs. real; us vs. them — can get in the way when we try to assess what exactly is being fact-checked and find quality news reports, including authentic photos and videos, on the same topic or issue.

Power of visual news storytelling must be addressed first

One thing I always do when I discuss issues and challenges surrounding news photos and videos like misinformation and gotcha journalism, I make sure to start with how images are powerful storytelling tools that connect us together.

They make us feel like we are witnessing a news event. They capture the emotions of the people in the news vividly while grabbing our attention and feelings. Some iconic news photos and videos raise awareness and stay in our memory for a long time.

I think it is important to address visual journalism's positive and effective side to avoid making students cynical amid a deluge of misinformation. I’ve summarised how I teach photojournalism in our Toolkit, featuring many video clips on this topic.

The same page also discusses issues like framing and image manipulation.

Upcoming events

Our next ANNIE Connect online gathering will be on 20 October 2023 at 10:30 a.m. HKT (UTC+8). I will demonstrate how I teach photojournalism with lecture slide examples and teaching activities.

If you're interested, please register here (if you haven’t done so yet, that is): https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rcuuvqzspGNBeY11cN6QZG8X6WIuVxhCO

Lastly, I am speaking at the half-day online conference organised by Germany’s Goethe Institut, titled “Facts & Context Matter: Media Literacy in East Asia and Europe,” on 28 October 2023, which starts at 14:00 (UTC+8).

It is free, and if you’re interested, you can download the program (PDF) and register in the following link: https://www.goethe.de/ins/jp/en/ver/fcm.html

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Identifying fact-checkable claims is not always easy.

After all, a lot of information we come across in our daily lives is not something we can evaluate by its factualness (opinions, for example).

Even when some statements or social media posts are verifiable in theory, it does not mean finding and gathering evidence is feasible in reality.

In one of the assignments in my fact-checking course at the university, I ask my students to 1) find a piece of information that is potentially false or misleading and 2) think about how they can investigate it.

In the end, they need to use the following template and submit it as a story idea.

Claim: Write down in a couple of sentences what the information is, with links to the claim(s), photo(s), video(s), statement(s).

Spread: Demonstrate how widely the claim is being shared and believed already (e.g. engagement figures, strong reactions and comments). If it's not yet trending, describe how the claim is likely to spread quickly in the future.

Significance: Explain why it is important to verify the claim. What is the potential harm if it turns out to be false (or true)? What are the possible consequences if no one checks it? Evaluate how badly the claim(s) would influence people and society, if not investigated.

Initial assessment: Briefly write what you know so far and discuss the likelihood of the claim(s) being false (or misleading) or true. Explain what needs to be done by listing out methods and strategies that can be employed (you do not need to investigate it further at this point, but you must show you have a plan). Make sure to check if it has not been fact-checked by someone already before you pitch the story idea.

For trained journalists and educators, perhaps the above template may seem straightforward (a detailed explanation of this template can be found in our Toolkit).

However, in my experience, many students struggle to understand what the process of verification entails and what evidence is required to disprove (or prove) the claim.

In the ANNIE Connect study group this week on Friday (Sept. 15), I would like to share and discuss the pitfalls of teaching fact-checking with some examples, focusing on what some students find difficult.

By the way, thank you to those who responded to the poll in the previous newsletter. Since more people prefer the 10:30 to 11:30 (GMT+8) time frame, we decided to change the schedule.

You should have received (or will receive soon) an invitation with the revised time if you have registered for ANNIE Connect before, but just in case, here’s the registration link:

https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rcuuvqzspGNBeY11cN6QZG8X6WIuVxhCO

Now, here is one example assignment to give you an idea:

Example of student submission

A student proposed to investigate the tweet below.

Claim: A Twitter post alleges that delivery-only restaurants in Korea have extremely poor hygiene conditions, providing photos and a video from Korean news outlet MBC as evidence. The visuals depict the unhygienic kitchen of a delivery-only restaurant in Busan, South Korea. The account owner also claims that many such restaurants have blocked windows.

Spread: Posted on March 19, the tweet has been retweeted over 1,400 times within two days and has received over 152k views. Given the growing concern surrounding hygiene issues, the tweet is likely to gain further attention and spread more widely.

Significance: The claim that delivery-only restaurants maintain poor hygiene conditions could severely impact the food delivery industry. If proven false, numerous delivery-only restaurant owners who maintain good hygienic standards could suffer significant profit losses, potentially leading to closures.

Initial assessment: The evidence presented focuses on a single restaurant, which is insufficient to support a general claim about the entire industry. To verify the claim, one could monitor the Korean news outlet that provided the video for further updates, or review annual or monthly assessments from the Korean hygiene management department to determine the percentage of delivery-only restaurants that meet hygiene standards.

My feedback

As you can tell, the above example was submitted by a student from Korea who was studying at our university, which is located in Hong Kong, making it even harder to fact-check the claims in the tweet.

The following is what I wrote as feedback:

You have discovered an intriguing claim that is certainly worth investigating. However, in its current form, your proposal focuses on a factor that is not entirely fact-checkable by a student in Hong Kong. While this could be excellent material for further journalistic investigation in Korea, it is not suitable for a fact-checking project in this course.

Here's why it's not fact-checkable.

Implied claim to be investigated: Many delivery-only restaurants in Busan have blocked their windows, presumably to conceal poor hygiene conditions, as demonstrated by the one mentioned in the MBC news report.

Assessment: Attempting to fact-check the windows of "many" restaurants in Busan from Hong Kong and investigate what the hidden kitchens behind them look like is not feasible. It is perhaps not realistic even for most people living in Busan as well, given the time it requires and potential troubles one might encounter with restaurant owners.

Your suggested two methods:

1. Wait for MBC to follow up and check other restaurants. — Yes, you may find out more but this is not a fact-checking methodology.

2. Check the records compiled by authorities. — You have not indicated if you have looked and made sure such data or records are available. But even if they exist, their accuracy in reflecting the real situation cannot be guaranteed.
   
   The existence of the MBC news report itself suggests that this issue has not been widely recognised by the public.
   
   If authorities were aware, it is likely that those restaurants would have been warned, and more news about this issue would have already been available in Korea.

This claim might require the type of investigation for you to go undercover, which is again not something a university student in Hong Kong can undertake.

I agree that the claim holds significance for people in Busan, especially if the number of unhygienic restaurants could be determined and there are indeed many.

However, for the reasons mentioned above, it is very unlikely that you can find that out.

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As the saying goes, ‘what starts well ends well’. These warm-up activities are important because they help learners identify their cognitive or knowledge gaps right away at the beginning of your lesson.

Good class exercises are the ones designed to pique learners’ interest and make them understand why they must pay attention to what you are about to teach.

Importance of verification

The first activity we discussed is the one I learned from Syed Nazakat, the founder of DataLeads and an Advisory Council member at ANNIE, in a workshop earlier this year.

The steps are simple. Show the image above and ask learners which shaft is longer. Those learners who have seen this optical illusion before would most likely say that the two lines have the same length immediately.

Meanwhile, those who are not familiar with the Muller-Lyer Illusion might say the bottom one is longer (after all, it is called an optical illusion because the bottom one looks longer).

In this activity, both answers are wrong. If you measure the length in the image, you discover that the bottom arrow shaft is, in fact, shorter.

The core message of this activity is also simple. Just because you have seen something similar, don’t assume you know the answer. It is important to verify (fact-check) everything before making a judgment.

There’s an app for that

How do we measure the length of something that is projected on a screen? The above activity is also a good way to introduce some tools learners can use. There are many iOS and Android apps, including the ones preinstalled by phone manufacturers, that can be used to find out the distance between two points using the phone camera.

Another optical illusion below is also a good way to introduce verification tools.

Show the above image and ask if learners can 1) recognise the person and 2) spot anything wrong with the photo.

In my experience, many students say different things off the top of their heads without consulting anything. It rarely occurs to them that they can quickly use the internet to search for more information — for instance, take a photo of the screen with their phone and flip the image upside down to investigate.

The same image looks like the one below when it’s oriented normally.

This activity illustrates the limitations of our eyes and gut feeling. Moreover, unlike the Muller-Lyer illusion, even those learners who have seen the image and know what is wrong with it often fail to explain why this optical illusion occurs.

Simple tools like the Google Lens app or various reverse image search services can work really well for this type of quick investigation because the search results will lead to those websites that explain what is going on in our brains when we see this optical illusion.

Do not reward speed

One thing I would like to note when it comes to activities in media literacy class is that we should not reward speed in these exercises.

Yes, many of us, including myself, have done that in the past, but now I believe it’s a wrong approach.

Tools like Kahoot! make it easy to gamify class activities and engage learners quickly. But the quizshow-style, competition-based learning that rewards speed, on top of accuracy, could send a wrong message because it tends to venerate knowledge cramming and encourage snap actions.

The core objective of news and information education is for learners to develop critical thinking skills with digital dexterity to use appropriate tools and techniques. Even if it’s a short ice-breaker, the underlying message in our activities should be that learners must spend some time to check everything.

At ANNIE, we use the mnemonic PRISM (Pause, Reflect, Investigate, Share, Monitor) to remind learners how to deal with news content. We design all activities based on this philosophy.

More examples in our Toolkit

We also discussed some of the activities we put in our Toolkit. This one below, for instance, was created five years ago when we were asked to develop teaching materials for primary school students (aged between 10 and 12).

We titled it, “What have you shared lately? Is it news?” in the Toolkit.

The objectives of this exercise are that students would:

• Begin to think about why we all have a strong desire to share information;

• Become aware of the difference between news and other types of information, such as unfounded rumours;

• Recognise the “public” aspect of information sharing;

• Understand the responsibility and risks of sharing questionable content, including potentially harmful gossip.

There were three more activities we went through in the workshop. They all target university students and adult learners, including professional journalists.

I don’t have a space to talk about them in this newsletter, but you can watch the entire workshop online through the Zoom link here. We also plan to put those activities in the Toolkit in the near future.

Next ANNIE Connect meeting

We have received many requests to record the meeting this time. Some of you said it’s because you’re still having a summer break; some of you said because the time doesn’t work in your timezone.

I am wondering if we should change the time for the next study group gathering on September 15 from 14:30 - 15:30 to 10:30 - 11:30 (GMT+8) because it seems Friday morning (in Asia) is more convenient for some educators in our network. Our friend in North America can also join if we make this change.

Please let me know what works best for you in the poll below:

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Just two quick announcements:

ANNIE Connect

First, our next educators’ online gathering is on August 18 from 14:30 to 15:30 (GMT+8). I plan to showcase a series of start-of-the-class warm-up activities my colleagues and I have been using in our journalism/media-related courses over the years.

If you are new to our group and/or haven’t signed up for it, here’s the registration link (Note: if you have registered before, the link is still valid. You will get an automated reminder next week):

https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rcuuvqzspGNBeY11cN6QZG8X6WIuVxhCO

Trusted Media Summit

The second announcement is about a workshop ANNIE will lead at this year’s Trusted Media Summit in Singapore on December 1, organised by Google News Initiative.

It’s free of charge, but please be aware that it is open only to conference attendees (which is a separate registration). The application just opened (link), and seats are limited.

The following are the details:

Building interactive news literacy simulations for future content creators

Description: Various media research around the world indicates younger generations primarily get news from video-based platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Surveys also show more children dream of becoming content creators than astronauts or medical doctors (or journalists) in many countries.

In this workshop, you will make a scenario-based simulation to be used in class. The one-day educational activity sprint aims to develop fun and engaging ways to teach the next generation of news producers and disseminators how to become responsible content creators and news consumers.

Two facilitators from the Asian Network of News & Information Educators (ANNIE) will walk you through the process of building lesson materials with useful tools, including slide templates and generative AI.

Selected simulation projects will be presented at the conference, and there will be a contest with a prize!

Trainers: Yvonne Chua and Masato Kajimoto

Note: This workshop is best suited for those working in the education field or have constant interaction in designing news & information literacy classes for youth.

Workshop application deadline: Aug 25, 2023 (application form here)

Workshop date: Dec 1, 2023

Time: 9.30am - 4.30pm

Lunch is provided at the Google Singapore office.

Venue:
Google Singapore, 
70 Pasir Panjang Rd, #03-71, Mapletree Business City II.

I hope to see as many of you virtually on Aug. 18!

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