This week in media forensics
Spot the Troll quiz
I heard an interview this week with Darren Linvill, a professor of communication at Clemson University, whose research explores social media disinformation and its influence on civil discourse (in and out of the classroom). What really caught my attention was the mention in the interview that Linvill directs something called the Media Forensics Hub. I looked it up immediately.
Launched in May 2020, one of their first projects is a Spot the Troll quiz. Here’s the tagline: The quiz where YOU examine images of real social media content and decide whether it's from a legitimate account or an internet troll. (I’m not sure using the word “real” here is the best choice…my wordsmith would probably go with “actual” instead).
Here’s the Hub’s definition of troll:
A troll is a fake social media account, often created to spread misleading information.
The quiz presents you with 8 social media profiles and offers a selection of posts for each profile. It covers X, Facebook, and Instagram profiles. You’re given a resource list after you make your selection on each profile…and a list of signs to help you determine if it’s a troll or not.
The resource list and signs are where the real insights happen.
Take the quiz. Read some of the resources. Explore the signs for each profile. Do it with a young person in your life, or your students. Compare how you all do and talk about what you learned.
And read Linvill and colleagues’ research on the project. Here is an excerpt:
In a large, online experiment, we find that inoculation through taking the Spot the Troll Quiz significantly improves one's ability to accurately identify accounts used by foreign governments to influence political discourse in the United States. Importantly, the benefits of the Spot the Troll Quiz were consistent for those across the political spectrum and across all ages.
Meanwhile, a related group—the Stanford History Education Group—formerly known as SHEG, has spun out of Stanford to become the Digital Inquiry Group. Now operating as an independent nonprofit, DIG still has the same team and resources available, all excellent and free. I attended several of their events when they were at Stanford. Get familiar with their resources for Civic Online Reasoning, and Reading Life a Historian.
Here’s one of their videos on the critical skill of Lateral Reading.
Find more of DIG’s videos here.
From the archives
Thinking Like a Fact Checker—a post I wrote after attending a Stanford History Education Group event in 2018
Thanks so much for reading. Be well. And please consider sharing this post with family, friends, teachers, and/or colleagues who might appreciate it and put it to work.