Lesson 4 Be Smart in the Digital World
Fake or Fact, That Is the Question
____ writer Oobah Butler wanted to experiment with how easily one can manipulate public opinion online.
He created a fake restaurant called The ____ at Dulwich.
____ set up an account for his “restaurant” on a popular online review site.
He did not provide an exact address and ____ it was reservations only.
He did this to ____ people think The Shed was a special restaurant.
He faked photos of The Shed’s ____ with shaving cream, whitening tablets, and even his own foot.
He ____ asked his friends to write favorable fake reviews on the review site.
Things quickly got
Things quickly got, in Butler’s words, “a ____ out of hand.”
From the lowest of the charts of the review ____, The Shed continuously climbed the London rankings.
He started getting e-mails and phone calls ____ reservations.
Interest further increased when he told callers The Shed was “fully booked for the next ____ weeks.”
Even ____, food suppliers started guessing The Shed’s address and sent him free samples, and many job applications came in.
These ____ happened without Butler serving a single meal.
The Shed eventually became London’s number-one restaurant on one of the most trusted restaurant review ____.
According to Butler, The ____ held that ranking for two weeks.
Butler’s story shows that
Butler’s story shows that much of what we ____ on the Internet cannot be trusted.
This emphasizes the ____ of digital literacy.
____ literacy is about more than just using computers.
It is the ability to use digital technology to find, evaluate, create, and ____ information.
To become digitally literate, we need to develop an attitude and ____ that enable us to detect false information online.
False information is any information that misinforms or deceives ____.
It can be about anything such as health, the environment, and ____ across many platforms.
It can be influential, as The Shed incident ____.
If people had been digitally literate
If people had ____ digitally literate, they would not have been fooled by The Shed experiment so easily.
Digitally literate people ____ have carefully considered information about The Shed without being distracted by other people’s reactions.
They would ____ been suspicious that the restaurant did not have an address.
They would ____ wondered why reviews on the restaurant did not appear in other more credible media.
If they had done these ____, they would likely have suspected that something was not right.
Fortunately, The Shed incident was an experiment that ____ little damage.
However, false information ____ cause emotional or financial harm to people.
For example, false information about a certain gender or belief group can stir up hatred against that ____.
It can cause fights between those who support the ____ and those who do not.
In ____, misleading online reviews about questionable products often trick people into wasting money.
To avoid being deceived
To avoid being deceived by false information, we need to ____ a habit of critically evaluating what we see online.
If you see a story that looks too good or too bad to be true, check the source ____.
Look at the website the story comes ____.
Does it look real? Are there spelling errors? ____ it have other stories or just the one you read?
____ that the story contains references and links to other information.
Click on those links and see if the other information ____ reliable.
Websites with false information often do not have many real stories about ____ topics.
They also often have lots of advertisements that pop up when ____ visit the sites.
You should then check the credibility of the content ____.
If a story has no ____ name, this could be a sign that its content is questionable.
If there is a name, find out what and where the ____ has reported before.
If the person has not written anything else or writes for a ____ that looks unreliable, think twice before believing the content.
Finally
Finally, check ____ else is reporting the story.
If no other media are reporting the ____ story, the story may not be true.
____ a few keywords from the story and put them in a search site to see if other media are supporting the story.
Sorting through the vast amount of information created and ____ online is challenging.
____, it is important that we know what false information is and how it spreads.
The better we recognize false information, the better we ____ be at avoiding it and helping others do the same.