Professional Documents
Culture Documents
©2016 National Council for the Social Studies Developing Students’ Skills for Civic Discourse
Confronting Confirmation
Bias: Giving Truth a Fighting
Chance in the Information Age
Alan C. Miller
Guns. Immigration. Climate change. Confronting students with this reality information is not created equal, they
Abortion. Race relations. Trade. Global is a crucial component of teaching news also need to learn the conceptual lan-
terrorism. literacy, which we define as the ability— guage, the critical tools and the habits
Across the spectrum of politically as a student, as a news consumer and of mind to examine news and informa-
charged issues confronting the nation, as a citizen—to discern credible infor- tion and determine its credibility for
Americans are more deeply divided mation from raw information, opin- themselves—and to do so as objectively
along ideological lines than they ion, misinformation and propaganda. as possible.
have been in decades. This division However straightforward that may This is especially important since
extends beyond partisanship: The Pew sound, it’s actually astonishingly com- research shows that when faced with
Research Center reported earlier this plex. Today’s information ecosystem information that contradicts our beliefs,
year that ideological divides are widen- presents students with unprecedented the thinking portion of our brain—our
ing along educational and generational opportunities to access and parse an capacity to reason—tends to shut down,
lines as well.1 enormous and rapidly growing sea of and our emotional defenses kick in.
These days, it's well worth recalling a information; to create and share and Facts, in theory, should prompt us to
comment by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, contribute to the national conversation; change (or at least reassess) our views;
a former Harvard University profes- to be empowered and have their voices instead, they often cause us to grasp ever
sor, White House aide and four-term heard. But it also offers an incredible more tightly to our erroneous beliefs or
senator: “Everyone is entitled to his array of challenges to know what to misconceptions. Moreover, those with
own opinion, but not to his own facts.” believe—a proliferation of raw infor- more education and higher levels of
This is underscored on an almost daily mation, viral rumors and fake news political knowledge are actually more
basis by the 2016 presidential campaign, sources; pervasive clickbait; videos prone to engage in this behavior than
where civic discourse has been anything of events staged to promote a cause those with less education.
but civil, and truth seems to be under or advertiser; repurposed images; and In a 1985 study, when researchers at
hourly assault. stealthy propaganda. Stanford University showed televised
In fact, Americans increasingly tend Giving students the ability to navigate images from American media cover-
to see their news through prisms of red this terrain involves teaching them skills age of the 1982 war in Lebanon to two
and blue—to seek confirmation of their that draw on core concepts borrowed groups of viewers—one pro-Israel and
existing beliefs, rather than information from the practice of journalism itself. the other pro-Arab—each side con-
that might contradict or complicate Students need to be able to understand cluded that the reporting was slanted in
them. We often gravitate to sources newsworthiness, sourcing, documenta- favor of the other. In short, the research-
aligned with our own biases and parti- tion, fundamental fairness and the aspi- ers wrote, “Our results provide a com-
san leanings, and we are served a steady ration of minimizing bias in a dispas- pelling demonstration of the tendency
diet of reinforcing information and sionate search for truth. They also need for partisans to view media coverage of
images by algorithms that shape and to be familiar with concepts of trans- controversial events as unfairly biased
filter what we discover through online parency and accountability. Not only and hostile to the position they advo-
searches and social media. do they need to be reminded that all cate.”2 It is not difficult to imagine this
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Bettmann/Corbis
generate usable data), what they have would otherwise be impossibly large over time until a verified, contextual
(what pieces of data they gather about and unwieldy. and accurate account of events emerges.
anyone) and how they work (what Today’s ubiquitous, always-on, warp-
third-party data they are tapping to Tools for Teaching News Literacy speed torrent of news and information
make assumptions about you). There Once students are made aware of their offers educators an abundance of teach-
is also evidence that algorithms can biases—and the ways that algorithms able moments. This applies to a wide
reflect the biases of their creators, who can reinforce them—they can be range of disciplines—including social
are disproportionately male and white.7 encouraged to overcome these cogni- studies, history, government, English,
Moreover, there are growing concerns tive barriers by consuming news from journalism and science—across nearly
about privacy, now that new tools that a wide range of sources, and by seeking all grade levels. Teaching news literacy
generate even more data are infiltrating out opinion pieces from a variety of is also an engaging way to connect to
every corner of our lives. They include points of view. On social media, they the real world and contemporary issues.
social media platforms that try to learn can “like” or follow credible sources But no single activity or tool can
about our dispositions, our friends and of news—including those they may not replace news-literate habits of mind.
family, and even our senses of humor; be inclined to agree with—so that these And when it comes to combating con-
mobile operating systems and apps that will show up on their feeds, along with firmation bias specifically, there is grow-
learn our daily routines, travel habits posts shared by friends. They can, in ing evidence that teaching students to
and favorite destinations; and web- short, work to control and diversify follow these habits of mind can make
based services that can see other web- their information diets. a difference.
sites we visit—sometimes even when Another teaching tool is to urge stu- “Individuals who reported high levels
we’re logged off. dents to try to withhold judgment when of media literacy learning opportuni-
While there are ways to opt out of they first learn of an event, especially ties were considerably more likely to
personalization and data collection, it on fast-breaking, chaotic and polarizing rate evidence-based posts as accurate
is becoming increasingly difficult to stories such as the recent shootings by than to rate posts containing misinfor-
do so. These data-producing digital or of police. The immediate aftermath mation as accurate–even when both
tools are now necessary in our daily of such events is invariably marked posts aligned with their prior policy
lives, and algorithms do have a legiti- by waves of speculation, rumors, false perspectives,” scholars Joseph E. Kahne
mate purpose: helping us to filter and reports and even conspiracy theories. and Benjamin Bowyer write in a soon-
navigate an information landscape that It is imperative to follow the reporting to-be published report.8 “Those who
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reported no exposure to media literacy Notes 8. See Joseph E. Kahne and Benjamin Bowyer,
1. See Pew Research Center, “A Wider Ideological “Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age:
education, in contrast, were not more Gap Between More and Less Educated Adults,” Confronting the Challenges of Motivated
likely to rate posts with evidence-based at www.people-press.org/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideo Reasoning and Misinformation,” forthcoming.
arguments as more accurate than posts logical-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults 9. See checkology™ Virtual Classroom, http://
/#partisan-divides-have-widened-on-many-political-
that contained misinformation.” value. thenewsliteracyproject.org/services/checkology.
Two new resources are available to 2. Robert P. Vallone, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper,
“The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased
help educators develop their students’ Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Alan C. Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former
ability to combat confirmation bias as Coverage of the Beirut Massacre,” at www.ssc.wisc. investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Times, is
the founder and president of the News Literacy Proj-
well as other news literacy skills. The edu/~jpiliavi/965/hwang.pdf.
ect, a national education nonprofit, which recently
3. Daniel J. Levitin, A Field Guide to Lies: Critical
News Literacy Project’s checkology™ Thinking in the Information Age (New York: launched the checkology™ virtual classroom.
virtual classroom includes lessons that Penguin Random House, 2016).
focus on bias, including confirmation 4. See Madeline Will, “College Students Mostly
Support Free Speech with Some Restrictions,
bias, and the pervasive role of algo- Survey Finds,” The Student Press Law Center
rithms.9 The News Literacy Project (April, 4, 2016), www.splc.org/blog/splc/2016/04/
college-students-mostly-support-free-speech-with-
also worked with Facing History and some-restrictions-survey-finds.
Ourselves to create “Facing Ferguson: 5. See Project Implicit, https://implicit.harvard.edu/
News Literacy in a Digital Age,” a mul- implicit/
6. See The Wall Street Journal’s Blue Feed, Red Feed,
timedia unit designed to help students http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/.
become responsible consumers and 7. Kate Crawford, “Artificial Intelligence’s White
producers of news and information Guy Problem,” The New York Times (June 25,
2016), www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/
(see below). sunday/artificial-intelligences-white-guy-problem.
html?_r=0
“Facing Ferguson”
Facing History and Ourselves and the News Literacy Project
(NLP) have created a free curriculum unit, “Facing Ferguson:
News Literacy in a Digital Age,” to help teachers and students
explore this question: “What is the role of journalism in a dem-
ocratic society?”* By studying the news reports, Twitter and
Facebook activity, blog posts and other information created
in the weeks after Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager,
was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri,
students explore the media coverage and protests—driven to
a large degree by social media—and learn to become informed
and effective civic participants in today’s digital landscape.
Through lessons and a rich array of digital resources, includ-
ing exclusive interviews with award-winning journalists who
covered Ferguson, students explore how identity affects our
responses to other people and events; understand how explicit Memorial on August 19, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, for Michael Brown,
the 18-year-old, African American teenager killed by police officer
bias, implicit bias and confirmation bias affect our response
Darren Wilson (Earchiel Johnson/PeoplesWorld.org/CC BY-NC 4.0 via
to the news; learn key news literacy skills, including how to
Flickr)
reduce bias and verify information; consider the challenges
and importance of maintaining a free press; and identify the
responsibilities of citizen watchdogs. NLP and Facing History staff will be presenting at the NCSS annual conference in Washington in
December, and a free online workshop designed to help teachers implement the unit is scheduled for Jan. –, . **
* See https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/facing-ferguson-news-literacy-digital-age
** See https://www.facinghistory.org/professional-development/upcoming-workshops
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