dents about fake news. He argues that satire can be used to focus on the how and why of misinformation instead of the what. Sebastian focused on politi- cal satire on television, particularly US shows.
These provide good discussion points amongst students, even if they do not get the humour themselves, as it allows them to dissect the story.
News programme That notorious Brexit bus message poses many questions about imaginative use of “facts”.
Article co-authors Kathy Neville and Alison Skoyles presented on the host institution’s fake news initiatives. These include workshops that appear on the students’ Higher Education Achievement Report. The Information Skills Advisers also worked with LSBU’s Journalism de- partment to help the students produce a news programme on fake news by finding willing panellists and even being inter- viewed themselves.
We then decided to arrange the confer- ence so that information professionals could get together to exchange ideas and best practice.
For twitter comments on the confer- ence, see the #LSBUFakeNews2018 hashtag and the presentations are on Slideshare at
www.slideshare.net/LLRLibrary/ presentations
Making headlines around the world was the fake news story of a fake Melania Trump being used as a stand in for the real First Lady. The theory behind the conspiracy was that Mrs Trump had left her husband several weeks prior and had not been seen in public.
Tools for fact-checking
Georgina Cronin, Katie Hughes and Lucy Welch’s entertaining presentation explored some fake news examples from history, and then looked at how people get their news today, noting the trend to rely solely on social media more and more. They suggested some tools for fact-checking news such as Snopes and the WayBackMachine. They demonstrated how Google can return different results depending on what computer is being used, which is a great way to clearly show what the fil- ter bubble is! They developed an active listening activity where participants had to listen to a radical point of view without responding until the person’s minute was up.
Critical thinking Heather Lincoln and Kay Griffiths from Imperial College London created work-
September 2018
shops for 300+ MSc Finance students on the topics of business and fake news. This tied in with the new Learning and Teaching Strategy, which placed empha- sis on the importance of critical thinking and integration of professionalism along- side information ethics. Students use the Prompt test
(
https://bit.ly/2Py524X) to evaluate informa- tion. There were excellent examples of practical exercises where students could clearly see the benefits of using a news- paper database like Factiva compared to Google.
Using satire
Sebastian Krutkowski from the University of Roehampton suggests an alternative pedagogical tool to checklists and Craap tests (currency, relevance, authority, accu- racy and purpose) – satire!
His presentation brought us full circle by proposing we use satire to teach stu-
There is clearly a lot of work being done by library and information professionals in this fast-developing area. We set up a Jisc mailing list so that delegates could continue their discussions and exchange best practice and ideas. We opened up the list to anyone who was interested, and at the time of going to press nearly 200 people had signed up.
Reflections This was the first conference any of us had organised, and we were thrilled that it was so well received. We were very lucky to have an excellent and experi- enced Events Team at LSBU who advised on everything from when the best time for a conference would be, to how to or- der catering, as well as providing as with rooms and name badges.
We made good use of Twitter in par- ticular, so that delegates could tweet their reactions to the presentations. We also asked for more specific feedback in the form of an online questionnaire after- wards so we could see what had worked well and what we could improve on for any future conferences.
We learned ultimately that it is impor- tant to have a team working on the pro- ject, so that the many (many) tasks can be fairly allocated, and for support and encouragement throughout the whole process. IP
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