Teaching Cyber Citizenship in an Age of Disinformation

Building resilience to misinformation and disinformation has quickly become a top priority for educators and national security experts alike. Teachers are increasingly seeking strategies and tools to help their students 1) identify characteristics of disinformation and misinformation 2) check for sources and determine the origins of streams of information, including motivations of authors and publishers 3) critically inquire about and seek evidence on the reliability and validity of information and 4) create and share media messages in ways that advance dialogue and civil discourse.

Fortunately, many new instructional materials and interactive games have been developed in the past few years to teach these skills and habits of mind. But the materials are not easy to find and compare. Educators—as well as researchers and other stakeholders in the cyber citizenship community—need a place where they can easily search, filter, sort, and find materials that match the needs of particular classrooms. They need a place to search for a range of options, from supplementary materials such as videos or games to be embedded in a short lesson to comprehensive curricular materials designed to be taught over a month, semester, or a year.

On January 21st, New America convened a working group to help us think through the development of this new space. This convening—hosted by New America in partnership with CyberFlorida, the Florida Center for Instructional Technology, and the National Association for Media Literacy Education—kicked off the building of a Cyber Citizenship Portal for educators in Florida and around the country. We welcomed ideas for how we can build this portal into a vibrant community of educators and researchers in this nascent field at the intersection of cyber security and digital media literacy.

For information on how to join the working group, please contact Lisa Guernsey at guernsey@newamerica.org or Peter Singer at singer@newamerica.org