Truth, Equality and Misinformation: An Analytical Project
"Fake news” may sound like the punchline of a lazy joke. But misinformation is very real, and so are its impacts. Misinformation isn’t new and organized disinformation campaigns are becoming more common online. Social media helps this type of content travel much faster. So. Why does this matter? The idea of “truth” is under fire today.
- How is truth constructed?
- How does our understanding of “truth” impact the way we see different topics and issues?
- What role does our understanding of truth play in our families, our communities, and our nation?
In order to answer these questions, first-year writing students will select a topic of interest, a controversy where people hold different beliefs and support multiple positions. We will learn new skills through partnerships with information literacy specialists at Dimond Library and also learning architects at the Parker Media Lab. Through multiple research strategies and fact-checking processes, students will work to investigate and analyze past and present rhetoric and critically evaluate ideas, arguments, and different points of view.
Students will ferret out new, more complex understandings of “truth,” exploring and unraveling debates that seem encumbered by either misinformation, or worse, disinformation. Students will write, create an extensive annotated bibliography and then produce and present a culminating digital project that represents a more complex understanding of truth within the controversy that each student has chosen.
