MeLiTa

Fake news isn’t a new phenomenon, but it has changed a lot over time. These lessons will take a dive into the history of news and fake news up until the rise of the internet.

In this lesson, students will learn about news and fake news since the invention of the printing press. They will also analyze three different case studies from different historical periods.

In the next and final lesson, students will do a fake news simulation in which groups create different narratives based on the same facts.

Fake news isn’t a new phenomenon, but it has changed a lot over time. These lessons will take a dive into the history of news and fake news up until the rise of the internet.

In this final lesson, students will play a simulation drawing inspiration from the theory and examples discussed in the previous two lessons. Groups will be assigned a role in an imaginary society and a secret objective they will try to accomplish by writing a statement.

News doesn’t pay for itself. That is why media have come up with different ways to finance their operations over time.

In this lesson, students learn about the history of journalism and newspapers, and how these media have supported themselves financially. In the second half of the lesson, students will start their own news companies and decide what business strategies work best for them.

The second lesson will focus on how online media run their businesses.

During the previous lesson, we explored the traditional publishing world and set up a bunch of newspapers. This is a good exercise to get a feel for the different considerations and costs of a media company, but in a way, it is already “old news”.

In this lesson, students will do one group exercise and one individual exercise after a short introduction about how the internet changed the media landscape.

The third and final lesson will take a closer look at paywalls.

During the previous lesson, we explored the transition from traditional publishing to the digital media of today.

In this lesson, students will take a closer look at paywalls and debate the question if the news should be free.

In this lesson, students learn about the basics of writing a news article, analyze the work of their peers, and discuss the strong and weak points of the articles produced.

Students are tasked with creating propaganda memes. They are given a news story and are told what side of the issue they are to represent. They then must make memes that could be effectively used to convince a general audience.

This lesson focuses on how we consume media, no matter which media we consume. We look at different reading techniques and focus on critical reading skills. The lesson focuses on the use of language in media, and how that shapes our interpretations.