As I said, in my last post regarding fake news, I’m not really one to confront others. In light of the assignment, and luckily only talking with my grandma, I was able to speak with her regarding her social media sharing.
I believed my best approach was talking to another and showcasing ways to avoid falling for fake news. Upon this exact conversation I had with my grandma, I realized that their was a better way to go about it. While I have previously corrected my grandmother regarding articles containing fake news, such as dead celebrities or articles regarding the coronavirus (especially since there was a case at ASU), the conversation typically ended with her saying something along the lines of ‘whoops’ or ‘my bad’. Nothing previously had put a stop to the continuing news being sent to my inbox. It never bothered her to send fake news because she’d rather be ‘safe than sorry’. Therefore as I explained the worry and pandemic it could cause, she brushed it off. I spoke about some easily identifiable traits within an article to help showcase the obvious fake news, but again she didn’t seem to both understand or mind. I had to try a different approach.
Everyone loves spending time with their grandparents (I hope). And if you’re like me, you often help your grandparents with setting up or helping with their cell phones. So given this problem, I combined the two and showed her the different identifiers when it came to fake news. Everything from looking at the website to clicking and learning more about the author really interest her. To be fair, she had no idea this was even possible. By sitting down and showing her how to look into these things, she paid very close attention unlike me talking about something she didn’t even know how to do.
It was very interesting to me to see what method worked versus what didn’t. I believe it is important to understand when someone is sharing fake news and how to help identify it to the user. My grandma seemed happy to learn something new and so far, I haven’t gotten anymore fake news article. Given its only been 1 day, I’m interested to see how long before she sends another one, hopefully never again, but we’ll see!
