It's time for schools to upgrade and reinvest in media literacy lessons.
Renee Hobbs, director of the Media Education Lab at the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island, cautions us to stop using the term "fake news" with students and be more precise about the types of disinformation prevalent in content today, from hoaxes and satire to clickbait. In this article, she focuses on one of the most challenging types of disinformation—propaganda—and how teachers can use resources such as the Mind Over Matter web site to examine and analyze propaganda with their students. She offers examples of the different ways that people can interpret these messages and looks at how students can discover what their intentions are.