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 ____ restaurant called The Shed at Dulwich.
Butler ____ up an account for his “restaurant” on a popular online review site.
He did not ____ an exact address and wrote it was reservations only.
He did this to make people think The ____ was a special restaurant.
He ____ photos of The Shed’s food with shaving cream, whitening tablets, and even his own foot.
He then asked his friends to write favorable fake reviews on the review ____.
Things ____ got, in Butler’s words, “a little out of hand.”
From the lowest of the charts of the review site, The Shed ____ climbed the London rankings.
He started ____ e-mails and phone calls requesting reservations.
Interest further increased when he told callers The ____ was “fully booked for the next six weeks.”
Even ____, food suppliers started guessing The Shed’s address and sent him free samples, and many job applications came in.
These things happened without Butler ____ a single meal.
The Shed ____ became London’s number-one restaurant on one of the most trusted restaurant review sites.
According to Butler, The Shed held that ____ for two weeks.
Butler’s story shows
____ story shows that much of what we see on the Internet cannot be trusted.
This emphasizes the importance of ____ literacy.
Digital literacy is about more than just using ____.
It is the ability to use digital technology to find, ____, create, and communicate 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 ____ or deceives people.
It can be about anything such as health, the environment, and economics across many ____.
It can be influential, as The Shed ____ shows.
If people had been digitally literate, they would not ____ been fooled by The Shed experiment so easily.
Digitally literate people would have carefully considered information ____ 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 wondered why reviews on the restaurant did not appear in other more ____ media.
If they ____ done these things, they would likely have suspected that something was not right.
Fortunately, The ____ incident was an experiment that caused little damage.
However, false information can ____ emotional or financial harm to people.
For example, false information about a certain gender or belief group can stir up hatred ____ that group.
It can cause fights between those who support the ____ 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 see a story that looks too ____ or too bad to be true, check the source first.
Look at the website the story ____ from.
Does it look real? Are there spelling errors? Does it have other ____ or just the one you read?
Check that the story contains ____ and links to other information.
Click on those links and see if the ____ information looks reliable.
Websites with false information often do not have many real ____ about other topics.
They also often have ____ of advertisements that pop up when you visit the sites.
You should then check the credibility of the ____ creator.
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 person ____ reported before.
If the person has not written anything else or writes for a website that looks unreliable, think twice ____ believing the content.
Finally, check who else is reporting the ____.
If no other media are reporting the same story, the ____ may not be true.
Pick a ____ 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.
However, it is important that we know ____ false information is and how it spreads.
The ____ we recognize false information, the better we will be at avoiding it and helping others do the same.