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