The phenomenon of “fake news”—biased publications or unverifiable blogs posting untrue or mostly false stories that receive many clicks on social media platforms—plagued the last election cycle. For example, a false report that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump circulated Facebook onto thousands of news feeds.
All throughout the election, incorrect and tainted information crept into many people’s lives through social media. While attempts to thwart the influence of this kind of news—Facebook’s efforts to block stories from known fake news sites and Chrome’s extension for “Fake News Alerts,” for two—haven’t yet been able to completely stop it—but an app aimed at K-12 students, called Newsela, could be the answer we need.
Newsela’s creator and CEO Matthew Gross said he created Newsela based off of schools’ efforts to teach students how to find reliable sources in our “post-truth” era. However, Gross said he believes that his app could produce much larger, positive change beyond K-12.
The app merges curated content, and strictly features verified sources and stories. Newsela includes historical documents—such as the U.S. Constitution and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech—for students to page through on the app. Newsela has also formed partnerships with various news outlets like The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times in order to ensure their content is up-to date-and truthful.
Read the full story here (via Good)
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Header photo by Rohit Farmer / Unsplash
