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