We Should Teach Media Literacy in Elementary School | Hacker News Reader

We Should Teach Media Literacy in Elementary School

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We Should Teach Media Literacy in Elementary School

We learned it when I was in elementary school. Through endless drills, the nuns taught us how to separate fact from opinion, and to read between the lines and spot what are now called "weasel words."

While it's a noble goal, I'd say that the two classes that should be brought back are civics and geography.

Geography so we can start having adults who understand their role in the world, and civics so they know how it works and how to change it.

I think if people knew how things (politics and government) worked, more ordinary people would run for office and the halls of power wouldn't be the exclusive domain of the rich and their lawyers.

While it's a noble goal, I'd say that the two classes that should be brought back are civics and geography.

Did we really get rid of those two classes? I honestly don't know, and have no children to know what is being taught these days. I graduated high school in the early 2000's but to this day my favorite class was "Law and Government", so much of this had to do with my teacher's genuine enthusiasm for the subject matter. We did mock trials, a few of which I won as a fake public defender.

That class was wildly informative looking back, you really do have me wondering what the state of that sort of curriculum is like these days.

(random addendum but a few years back I ran into the gentleman who taught that class, at the voting booth-he was volunteering his time as a poll worker. Just as civic minded as I remembered him)

In New York you have civics, history, and geography all lumped in together under "social science".

I was at a pretty typical city public school ~>15 years ago. Even then we didn't really have "civics" as it were. There were "world history" courses and things in that vein, mostly focused on europe and asia, with a gloss over the other countries. (laughably so, looking back). There was a large course in american history, but it was almost all rote, and had nothing to do with how I would phrase "civics" in terms of pragmatic participation and impact. Similar statements could be made re: learning about "the economy" in history and "home finances" (writing a check) in home-ec but nothing about pragmatic long term planning, college loans, any of that stuff.

I shouldn't sell it entirely short, if you took some more esoteric extracurriculars/AP courses you could get some exposure but it was still very academic and VERY niche.

To stop beating around the bush, speaking at least for my school (even around when you graduated) had very little to prepare someone to actually be an informed participant in society. This likely varies heavily by school however, but polling my wife as well, she echos an even more bleak story. (private Jewish school)

I was at a pretty typical city public school ~>15 years ago. Even then we didn't really have "civics" as it were.

Interesting contrasts we have here, eh? I went to a public HS in a hyper-rural area in the deep south. Law and Government I & II were classes required by juniors and then seniors respectively.

My expectation was that city schools would definitely have these courses, it's interesting to learn in your case they didn't.

It's state-by-state, usually. The curriculum in GA and NV (both states I went to High School in) in the 90s required a US history course and a civics course. In NV it was "US Government", a senior course (typically). In GA it was, in my district, just "Civics" and was one semester, sharing the year with a baby Economics course (which was really more personal finance than economics).

School districts have some leeway to add additional courses, or to alter the typical order of them. For instance, that civics course in GA could've been a one year senior level course in a neighboring district. But the civics course was required across the state at the time.

It's hard to teach history if you're going to test people on it. There's too much history for anyone to really know even a tiny bit of it, so it's probably better to teach it through literature.

>That class was wildly informative looking back, you really do have me wondering what the state of that sort of curriculum is like these days.

I had a similar class in the early 2000's, complete with the mock trial and enthusiastic teacher, but looking back see it more as blatant propaganda. For example, our trial was an incredibly idealistic view of what is a terribly broken court system. Most of the class was similar, teaching the ideals of being an American without any connection to reality.

> our trial was an incredibly idealistic view of what is a terribly broken court system

What were they supposed to do, have your defendant spend years in jail waiting for a trial because they can't make bail? Automatically dismiss all the jurors with the same skin color?

Skip the mock trial and fairly assess the criminal justice system. The trial doesn't teach useful things, and instead leaves students trusting a system that could arbitrarily decide to ruin their life.

> two classes that should be brought back are civics and geography

Geography? What happened to geography classes? When were they cancelled?

Graduated high school (public) in 2012 and college in 2016, never had a single dedicated geography course despite being interested in it. I remember going over continents in elementary school, but I still feel dumb when I look at a globe and see how far north Japan really is, or how the countries are arranged in western Asia.

Is that only an American thing? Because over here in the UK geography and history are mandatory parts of the school curriculum for those aged 5-13, and are usually taught to 14-16 year olds as well.

If they've removed it from the US version, that's pretty depressing.

There is no single "US version" of primary or secondary education. Curriculum is mostly set at the local or state level, so you will see lots of variation in stuff like this.

I found both history and geography pretty lacking at school (partly why I dropped them both before GCSE-level).

My only real memory of Geography classes is how oxbow lakes are formed.

My memory of history in primary and secondary school involved Celts & Romans (one in primary, once in secondary), Tudors & Stuarts (likewise), some unit about the agricultural revolution(? secondary school) and a short time learning about the Second World War (secondary school).

I think it probably gets better during GCSEs and A-Levels, but I only started learning about history again after Civilization V inspired me to check out some history podcasts (mainly because I felt embarrassed about not knowing anything about these civilizations and their leaders).

> I found both history and geography pretty lacking at school (partly why I dropped them both before GCSE-level).

I thought you were required to do one or the other at GCSE? What did you do instead?

I thought so too, but my school didn't make us at the time (I started Y10 in 2004). I was able to pick four options at GCSE, so I took French, Spanish, Drama and Music. My other subjects were 2x English, 3x Science, 2x Maths, German (I took the exam at the end of Y9 because I was dropping it anyway), 0.5x IT and 0.5x Religion.

Would explain that video that went viral years ago though of US citizens interviewed in the street and asked where the US was on a map of the world.

Some of the responses were comical. Some were just depressing.

I graduated from a public high school in CA in 2000, and we had no geography class required, or even offered (I think). But we didn't have CS either, and if I'd been given the choice I would have chosen the latter I'm sure.

Could we really teach about how things work?

There is the polite fiction, and there is the reality. The reality involves miraculously good investments and other things that totally aren't bribes, especially because they are often done by spouses and children of elected officials. The reality involves trading scandal information to blackmail each other into supporting the uniparty. The reality includes legislation written by lobbiests. The reality includes winning at any cost, such as via election fraud.

The point of teaching how things should work, are "meant" to work in the ideal situation is so that when they get to practice civics they recognize those other behaviors as aberrant and bad.

A history and civics course could actually go into how none of those things were new, even from the founding of the Republic.

I feel like a huge number of people have completely forgotten about what they learned in high school history like the corrupt bargain, the guilded age, westward expansion or really any number of other absurd things that have happened in this country, or similar events that have happened in other countries. Those weren't just stories and they weren't just things that you needed to know for the test and then forget about, we teach them in high school for a reason.

I think this will be an essential skill for all "future adults" and I agree with the premise of the article. The real challenge is the elderly. My 79 year old Mom has found her way to Facebook but has zero skills to deal with the chumbucket that Facebook has become. Teaching her to check something like snopes is like trying to stop a hurricane by closing your shutters. She fundamentally believes whatever her "friends" share.

My late uncle flew airships during WW2, and was always looking for new things to learn (look up elderhostel; he averaged 1 per year for his last 30 years). He remembered peoples' names, spent time getting to know people who he had no reason to be nice to, and was generally considerate and generous. He also regularly emailed the most blatant propaganda to family and friends. I replied to one and said that I appreciated that he was trying to educate people so they could be better-informed citizens, but that the stuff he was sending was definitely not having that effect. I told him about Snopes and other ways to check on things before passing them on.

He replied, saying "let me know if you want me to take you off my list". And then he put "fact-checked at snopes" on every email. Yes, all the same crap.

Not all elderly people are lacking the skills to detect BS. Some pass it along with full knowledge that it's garbage. And they're not all sociopaths.

I learned geography in school. It was horribly done.

In elementary school, pick a country from a region and memorize trivia about it, then watch interminable presentations from classmates about their chosen country within the region.

In highschool, it was primarily "how to read a municipal topographical map" as if that provides any meaningful context. And lots of stuff about how the region was shaped geologically.

Very little real context about how the larger world works. Also nothing about municipal civics and planning.

> I'd say that the two classes that should be brought back are civics and geography.

Wait, US schools don't teach geography?

I agree with you about Civics as well.

Throw Ethics and Personal Financial Education in there too. So much of the economy is predicated on people not knowing enough about the complicated financial arrangements that are offered to them.

If your parents don't teach you and your school doesn't teach you, you're left to figure out the scams for yourself.

Despite having a great elementary and high school system, I learned critical thinking (at least in any obvious way) from exactly one class.

It was a Home Ec class in junior high. (7th grade had both Home Ec and Shop, 8th grade you picked one). We had just finished "how to order from a catalog" (because I'm old) and the teacher passed out magazines and we were to find an ad, then list 5 ways it was deceptive.

The first few were easy. Showing money, attractive people, fast cars, happiness...but then things got subtle.

Once we did, we shared with the class. I don't recall my ad. I DO recall the lesson that clicked for me. It was an ad for Bayer aspirin. "4 out of 5 doctors recommend", the ad said, something I had seen on countless commercials. "Who picks the doctors?" asked the student.

Blam. Mind Blown. I had never considered that particular aspect. This opened up that "clinical studies prove..." doesn't mean anything. Awards, certifications...the idea that I could be told words that were technically true but misleading went from something that could be told to me and that I could recite back to something REAL, that I applied on my own.

I don't know that you can teach critical thinking, but I know that you can push opportunities for it to 'click'. This was one day of one class out of thousands of days of schooling. I learned lots of lessons in school, both factual and personal, and while there were likely many other more subtle lessons about critical thinking, this was a real moment of change for me, and it feels like it could have so easily slipped by.

We should absolutely push students to be ready to accept evidence while also questioning what is presented. Repeatedly. over and over again, because you never know how many times it will take to suddenly start working.

I love this, that is a great assignment for a Home Economics class.

That's a great example. I remember having lessons in school where we analyzed ads to decide what persuasion/propaganda techniques were being used. I hope these types of lessons are taught somewhat commonly. However I don't remember being asked to point out how the ads were deceptive.

My youngest siblings were homeschooled for a couple years and my mom made sure to go through logical fallacies with them. Cognitive biases is another area worth studying to understand how we respond to media input or in our interactions with others.

I'm not sure we need a special 'media literacy' subject taught. There are more broad subjects that can provide the same benefits.

It wasn't that long ago I realised that the company "voted best SME" or whatever just bought that award in many cases, sometimes they created the "Society for Careful Scrutiny" (!) that gave the award.

Want a certificate from an official body? If you've got money create the official body in order to get the award. People seldom look past the austere logo anyway.

Is there any evidence this will be effective?

Critical thinking, analytical thinking and systems thinking are things that should be taught throughout school, in all classes. Those are general skills. But what exactly is media literacy?

article> More worrisome, contrary to the perception that the fake news epidemic is a conception of malicious online news-bots, there is evidence that suggests the public actually craves fake news.

Well, exactly. There are some people who have trouble figuring out what's true. But in a lot of cases false information spreads simply because people want to believe in it. This is less about critical thinking and more about underlying psychology and sociology.

I doubt it will achieve much. Actual, professional journalists don't seem to be able to refrain from spreading bogus viral claims on social media so long as it fits their biases. It's surprisingly hit and miss as to whether they even manage to catch the ones which are outright disproved by the very source being linked to.

I remember one of my teachers senior year of high school showed us a bit for Bowling from Columbine, and then demonstrated how clips from completely different NRA events had been cut between to make it sound like something was said right after Columbine which, had, in fact, been said at an entirely different time in an entirely different place. There's a few articles online about the other tricks Moore used in the documentary.

But yeah, I'd say the one time in school I was educated on how biased media can be misleading was as a senior in high school, and I definitely think it should be earlier than that.

Sadly, Michael Moore isn't the only one using this technique.

Any proposal like this should include, "And we should cut topic X to make room for it."

Media literacy is absolutely a good thing to have, but schools don't have unlimited time to teach every subject

Granted, some topics can be integrated into others, but piling things on is not a sustainable thing to do.

And we should cut cursive handwriting to make room for it. No need to prepare kids for the 20th century when you can already sign documents with emoji.

They cut cursive handwriting a long time ago.

Maybe in your area, but definitely not universally in America.

We should cut all standardized tests whose makers cannot show a causal link between success in life and increased tests scores on their exam. That should free up at least six years of time to learn civics, history, and geography.

> "And we should cut topic X to make room for it."

We could start with having one, or two years of Shakespeare, instead of five.

We could also drop most of the feel-good national history fairy tale propaganda bullshit.

Also, while we're at it, ditch most of chemistry, beyond the basics (Conservation of mass, atoms and molecules, formulas for basic chemical reactions, combustion, acids and bases, temperature, pressure, and ideal gases, the common forms of matter are all good, and can be covered in three months, tops. [1]

Also, while we're at it, maybe 30 minutes of homework a day, instead of 120? And smaller class sizes?

[1] I explicitly omit nuclear physics [2], but only because I categorize that as part of physics.

[2] Everyone should understand how an atomic bomb works, how an atomic reactor works, and what the differences between the two are. [3]

[3] And why two countries having thousands of the former pointed at eachother is completely bonkers. Especially when a few hundred would work just as well.

You didn’t cut anything. You just described everything that is in a basic sophomore chemistry class and it does take a whole year.

In regards to smaller class sizes, everyone wants that but no one wants to pay for it. Communities and politicians have bitter fights over 0.2% changes in education budgets when meaningfully changing class sizes would require increases of at least 50%.

Source: I teach HS chemistry.

The wider costs of people lacking media literacy and the ability to think critically are harder to measure, but I would suspect them to be vast.

Cost to whom? An easily manipulated population is the dream of some politicians, why would they work against it.

I had this when I was in public elementary school between 2000-2005. It was part of the library classes, and we were also taught information retrieval on Google and some of the Google competitors at the time. Everything from how to find sources and evaluate if they were trustworthy. It was obviously simplified, but it's one of those things that I think really stuck with me.

Maybe what should be taught is “don’t trust anything you read”. That goes for everything from textbooks to newspapers. Instead children are often taught to memorize and obey, which leads to issues when you have to tell your child that the teacher was wrong, and that a teaching certificate doesn’t make you magically all-knowing.

Which is kind of what I was thinking. As soon as you start teaching kids not to be swayed by "agenda-driven sources," what happens when they start realizing that their textbooks and their teachers are also "agenda-driven sources"?

Which is why this proposal will never fly.

I realized that in 6th grade, and made up my own mind about such things ever since. Sometimes resulting in bad grades :-)

Even my shop teacher would make serious errors in explaining things, enough that I didn't take anything he said as a given.

Lots of kids realize the limitations of their teachers' intellects at some point. Once you realize how dumb your teacher is, it's a short step to realizing how dishonest she is. As long as smart kids can still be civil in class, it isn't usually a problem. They just make their peace with the fact that while their fellows learn in school, they have to find somewhere else to do that. After all, a judicious combination of wikipedia and reddit is bound to be more enlightening than a public school class.

I've been thinking about literacies a while ago and recently put together a proposal for a talk on just this (mostly with regards to 'fake news'):

In order for students to know who and what to trust and not trust on the internet, and develop the ability to spot fake news for themselves, it is crucial that we don't just provide them with the conventional toolkit and heuristics for spotting misleading information like paying close attention to authorship, peer-review, and something's scholarly nature, but instead grow their technical literacy to encompass a functional understanding of how content flagging, search ranking, and content recommendation work in order to h ave a more general and transferable understanding of why fake news can, in fact, be seen as real news to some.

I had critical thinking and current events classes all throughout elementary school.

Was a private school but never thought about its utility or the idea that may have been an exceptional part of the curriculum till this very moment.

Some schools do as part of the library/media time. Librarians rule!

I'd go a step further and suggest that a curriculum like this should also teach responsible handling of digital content overall, use of technical devices, privacy, and some related topics, a sort of maker space in the classroom if you will.

Mobile devices seem to become the norm for young children on how to interact with software and hardware, and the locked down and consumer-oriented design leaves very little room for tinkering.

When I was in high school (which wasn't that long ago), I had a dedicated class on critical thinking, and a unit on critical thinking in another. It has helped me very much in my adult life in spotting bias and emotional manipulation in the media.

It's unfortunate that I'm unable to find a source that doesn't manipulate language to achieve a desired emotional state in their readers.

I think things are going fine as it is. The more ridiculous question the media becomes the more discredited it gets and less people pay attention. Media is inherently flawed since it seeks to monetize views. Newspapers, while still relied on readership had less invasive ways of monetization. If you ask me, the current cycle of distrust in media is well deserved. When you have all but a few people controlling the worlds attention, we need to be highly skeptical of anything we come across. Real news can be found on actual news source sites, we don’t need political angles, spun opinions or clickbait titles to get actual news. Things have a tendency to resolve themselves so let’s not shove it down our kids throats at an early age. If we need something useful to teach them how about we start with personal finance- you know, things that actually matter to your life.

Such a course should include memetics and cognitive biases. I have long been pondering what a memetics course for elementary students should look like. I want to inoculate children against marketing, advertising, religion. I don't think that would be politically viable in a lot of places in the world.

Exactly. It's a good idea, but there are way too many opportunities for its implementation to be heavily skewed towards some bias or belief. If you believe something is true because it is in some religious text, it'll be very hard for you to teach children to question any news which appears to condradict it, even if that news is factually (and technically) correct.

I was thinking that, for religion, the most politically acceptable path is to teach as many religions as practical to children. If they know the details of many religions at an early age, they might be inoculated against one of them being presented as the truth.

That's likely what I'd do for my own child(ren) but there's absolutely no way that would happen in a school dominated by teachers who practice one particular religion, or in a district/state governed by followers of one particular religion.

I'm less interested in changing public policy than I am in developing a course that is targeted to children. A lot of explanations of memetics are designed for older readers. The problem is that marketing for politics and religion gets in well before children have a defense for it. I am wondering what a course in memetics designed for children looks like and how it could be made effective. Deployment/distribution is a separate problem. Certainly such a course/book would be illegal in many countries. It would be rejected in many places in the United States.

You're describing using the government in a capacity to directly undermine the religious teaching authority of a child's parents. That's probably not legal if that's actually the stated goal of your plan, and it's not going to sit well with parents.

Certainly it would be legal, that the First Amendment is incompatible with the First Commandment is not legally challenged. Lots of schools teach about the world's religions in some way. One cannot understand world politics without describing religion.

I'm not saying such a course would be politically viable, nor am I interested in interfering with the indoctrination by those parents already infected. I am exploring ways to protect those who have a choice.

I had to teach nurses media literacy in grad school (I was a TA for a class called Nursing Informatics, essentially a course about evidence-based practice, using EMR and information systems, etc. The instructional part of the course was entirely online, and I had to administer labs in person and do all of the grading and feedback, so I was their primary point of contact while they never even met the actual professor). One of their labs was to pick a site from a predetermined list, and evaluate whether or not the information presented was reputable. The results were quite disheartening, particularly because many of these people were adults that were re-training for new careers.

I took a course in advertising which was invaluable. Recognizing different sort of marketing appeals and strategies, etc... I've been trying to teach that to my kids too.

My favorite course from college was called "Reason, Language, and Argumentation". The teacher was amazing, and the content & class discussions were vibrant. The central theme was learning about various logical fallacies and then watching the news, reading articles, etc, spotting the fallacies, discussing it together as a class, and so on. I could see this general structure working at the elementary school level.

Media literacy, or more broadly critical thinking skills, is good to teach but hard to apply in practice when it comes to the news. This is because we get our news so fast, and in so many places, it's hard to slow down and evaluate pieces in-depth.

Pardon the self-serving comment but given the relevance, I hope it's useful.

My startup has built tools to simplify the evaluation so people can focus on harder questions like "why did the media construct the message this way". Here's a blog post we published today on why this is important.

https://blog.civikowl.com/making-it-easy-to-apply-media-lite...

How much are we going to teach kids in the future?

Every elementary kid should learn: programming, philosophy, Quantum physics, Media Literacy, Civics, etc;

If we teach it to adults, the kids can learn it at home.

Pushing this onto the entire populace is a cowardly way to govern. What ought to be done is simple, even if how it ought to be done isn't: ban fake news.

We don't expect people to discern what foods and drugs are dangerous, so neither should we expect people to have to discern what is true or not. If it's untrue, someone should be able to bring a libel case.

People can bring libel cases in the case that it's actually libel. Apart from that, America doesn't protect the ability to give out poison in the Constitution, it protects free speech.

As I understand it, libel (and slander) only apply when someone's reputation was damaged. I'm saying it could be made a crime to mass-broadcast false information.

I certainly trust governments to decide what is and isn't fake news.

We used to do it in the UK. Certain newspapers campaigned to have it removed from the curriculum.

> We used to do it in the UK. Certain newspapers campaigned to have it removed from the curriculum.

When was that?

Media Literacy can be discussed and taught in current education structure, but performance goals for teachers and schools have moved the focus from critically thinking about a topic to getting enough students to remember one correct answer. In elementary school, we learn that you should only speak if you have the right answer and that being wrong is shameful. If the goal is to get people to understand the five pilers of Media Literacy (access, analyze, evaluate, create and act) we have to start by saying right and wrong are not the only fields upon which you can play. My ideas about watching tennis are different than your ideas but because you hold a different view of sport does not equal one party is right and one wrong. Teaching kids to look at big pictures can help them in media literacy. If one child hits another on the playground, we want to hear the reasons behind the altercation but also want the kids to understand that pain is uncomfortable and actions, even inaction, have/has consequences. In this way, we tell them that all sides of the story need to be considered (access). The person hit has one story, the kid doing the action has another and the onlooking parent another (analyze). We express that while the child felt justified they would not like it if someone hit them given that same reason followed by bringing up other alternatives to the action (evaluate). Then we encourage them to, in the future, find different ways to settle differences and/or communicate more effectively(create). The kids then go on their way, and we repeat this process as necessary, or the kids display different actions in similar situations(act). Later in life teachers ask kids how things make them feel, this is important in analyzing media because when we can pick up on emotional cues, we are better able to discern emotionally deceptive advertising. Teachers also encourage kids to express themselves but look at what others are saying. These are great but usually only last a short time before governments, districts, and the like force teachers to cram facts and figures into kids heads so that enough kids fill in enough correct bubbles that will compel the government to provide schools funding they desperately need. Young people are brilliant. When presented with a concept, like deception in advertising, they pick up on countless ploys and manipulative language. We should encourage kids to go beyond asking "What is Shakespeare trying to say in Macbeth Act I Scene V" and also have them do this with print advertising around their town. Studying news clippings published during WWI and then also having them pick apart current news reports about Armistice Day. I sit here knowing that these are hopeful ideas because of the funding structure for the American education system. A more realistic option is for adults to talk to young people like adults. Age does not limit your ability to grasp difficult concepts, lack of conversation about these topics does. Be fearless and call deception as you see it. Watch a movie with questionable morals with your niece? Start the discussion. Two news anchors fighting about a trade war? Mute the TV, express that international trade deals are complicated but shouting doesn't make someone correct. Should media literacy be taught in schools? In some capacity it already is, what will help a great deal is to encourage and promote critical thinking. When we encourage people to tackle big topics, ideas, and analysis we are permitting them to challenge presented convention so that they can establish their own informed opinion. Which is the goal of media literacy.

I'm teaching it to my kids already:

Lesson #1: Everything you see, hear, or read is someone else's agenda.

The amount of adult human beings who, when asked for a reference, cite wikipedia (rather than the reference wikipedia uses, if it has one) shows that we should teach media literacy per-se - primary school would be ideal, but so would anywhere.

Not complaining about the downvotes, but this is interesting - wikipedia themselves recommend not citing wikipedia, as it's not considered a primary source.

I've never heard anyone argue in favour of citing secondary sources, merely not doing it out of ignorance - but obviously people seem to disagree.

Downvoters might not disagree with your conclusion. They might disagree with either the veracity, the grammar, or even the significance of your premise.

For non academic non controversial things I highly recommend citing wikipedia. Citing wikipedia transitively cites multiple usually high quality sources, provides verification that the sources actually more or less represent the consensus on the topic instead of being someone fringe idea, and is really easy to quickly find.

Incidentally, Wikipedia insists you site secondary (third party) sources on Wikipedia itself [0,1]. Wikipedia would be a tertiary source [2] though so I think this is language thing and not a real disagreement between you and Wikipedia's policy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Citing_sour...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_source

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_source

> I think this is language thing and not a real disagreement between you and Wikipedia's policy.

Yes, in wikipedia speak, I mean wikipedia want you to site a secondary sourc,e and not wikipedia itself (which is considered a tertiary one).

> citing wikipedia transitively cites multiple usually high quality sources

Sometimes. Other times it transitively cites nothing.

While teaching media literacy sounds good in theory, in practice it may be helping to radicalize people. The problem is that while the media is often-to-usually wrong, when people try to fact check what they're reading some percentage of them end up surfacing even more dubious information and then go on to literally become nazis.

Danah Boyd gave a good talk on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I7FVyQCjNg

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