Working in a large, diverse primary school library, I see it as one of my leading roles to be an educator and teach students to become digitally literate – where they are informed learners who begin to realise not all information you come across is accurate. The readings by Komendantova et al. (2021) and Rampersad and Althiyabi (2020) highlight the plague of misinformation available across social media platforms. This misinformation, often disguised as factual information, has been made more readily available through social media as it is visual, written, verbal and constant(Rampersad and Althiyabi, 2020). As a result, children must be taught to discern this misinformation from what is factual.

As an information professional and teacher librarian, it is my role to start teaching students how to interact on social media, how to spot misinformation and what to do with it. While some misinformation may seem harmless, children need to be taught strategies to cope with misinformation overload and ensure that misinformation does not continue to spread. In my experience, it has been through the explicit teaching of digital citizenship skills that this is achieved. Setting a foundation of knowledge and skills that broadly cover digital citizenship has allowed for positive growth among my students. It has been interesting to see students’ confidence grow since learning how to interact with the information they are presented.

I believe there is still a way to go as technology continues to change and expand. Students are constantly being presented with new ways to access information and as a result, misinformation as well.

References

Komendantova, N., Ekenbergg, L., Svahn, M., Larsson, A., Shah, S. I. H., Glinos, M., Koulolias, V. & Danielson, M. (2021). A value-driven approach to addressing misinformation in social media. Humanities and Social Communications, 8(1), 1-12.

Rampersad, G. & Althiyabi, T. (2020). Fake news: Acceptance by demographics and culture on social media. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 17(1), 1-11.