LibGuides: Fake News, Misinformation, and Disinformation: Media Literacy Activities and Games

Media Literacy in the Classroom

Harmony Square Game
armony Square is a game about fake news. The game’s setting is the idyllic Harmony Square, a small neighborhood mildly obsessed with democracy. You, the player, are hired as Chief Disinformation Officer. Over the course of 4 short levels, your job is to disturb the square’s peace and quiet by fomenting internal divisions and pitting its residents against each other.

NewsFeed Defenders
A news media literacy game that "...teaches players how to detect and disregard disinformation and misinformation in today’s chaotic environment."

Spot the Troll Quiz
From the Hub at Clemson University, the quiz where you examine images of real social media content and decide whether it's from a legitimate account or an internet troll.

Loki's Loop games ( a project of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public) and play-based activities are designed for use in libraries, schools, and other educational settings. The escape rooms are designed as a fun and engaging way for people to build resilience to misinformation.

The games aim to:

Boost critical awareness of misinformation technologies and tactics
Generate reflection on individual and societal vulnerabilities to misinformation
Create a safe space for sharing experiences and strategies with misinformation

Think you are an expert in all things media literacy?! Try some quizzes!

Quiz: Is it legit? Vetting news sources for credibility Many sources compete for attention online, including partisan blogs and bogus sites posing as legitimate news organizations. It can be tough to know what to trust. So, what does “credibility” look like, and how can you recognize it?

Quiz: Fighting falsehoods on social media How much do you know about these platforms’ misinformation policies?

Quiz: How news-literate are you? Test your news literacy knowledge with these 12 questions.

NewseumED.org offers free resources to cultivate the First Amendment and media literacy skills essential to civic life. Learn how to authenticate, analyze and evaluate information from a variety of sources and put current events in historical context through standards-aligned lesson plans, interactives, videos, primary sources, virtual classes and programs.

The Sift https://newslit.org/educators/sift/ is a free weekly newsletter for educators delivered during the school year that offers a rundown of the latest topics in news literacy — including trends and issues in misinformation, social media, artificial intelligence, journalism and press freedom. It provides discussion prompts, teaching ideas, classroom guides, quizzes and two sets of teaching slides each week.

Try your luck at a quiz : Misinformation

Kick off a media literacy discussion with a fun and quick four corners activity https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/four-corners. Use statements from the New York Time's Teenagers and Misinformation: Some Starting Points for Teaching Media Literacy article. Attached below.

Four Corners Activity

Teach and learn with The New York Times. Website includes multimedia activities like What's going on with this picture? which are focused on media literacy.