You can handle the truth
Google will invest $3 million in news literacy programs for teens
Google is ready to shell out $3 million in the battle against fake news.
A new project called Mediawise, which is being funded by the tech giant, aims to help teenagers identify fake news online. The Poynter Institute, a resource for journalists, will head the project, which intends to enlist the help of educators and YouTube content creators, including author John Green.
Mediawise will include a media literacy curriculum for middle and high school students and a "first-of-its-kind teen fact-checking initiative," Poynter explained. The teenaged fact checkers will work with professional journalists online to parse real news from fiction and will produce "heavily visual" reports, Poynter said, "to reach teens wherever they are consuming news."
The effort is centered on a body of research from the Stanford History Education Group that shows that "despite being constantly online, the vast majority of teenagers are unable to correctly evaluate the credibility of online news and information," Poynter said. Adults, Poynter added, "didn't do much better."
Poynter is hoping to engage 1 million students with Mediawise, with at least 50 percent coming from "underserved or low-income" communities. Google's $3 million investment in the project will come over the course of two years. Also Tuesday, the company announced its larger $300 million Google News Initiative, which is an effort to "strengthen quality journalism" through new tools and partnerships with news organizations, per CNN.