The Ministry of Information
A project about the power of the media influencing our perceptions, our choices, our decisions, our world.
Misinformation
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
―Thomas Jefferson
In this cross-curricular project we hope to answer some of the big questions of our time and to consider some of the problems and challenges that information/misinformation can cause and to pose possible solutions.
You will look at ‘the news’; inaccurate, misleading, even possibly completely incorrect.
You will look at deep fakes & fake news, dodgy dossiers, brexit buses; how big things can happen based on the wrong information!
You will look at misleading statistics and how a graph or statistic can be ‘fake news’
You will look at the power of the media; of persuasive writing; of how our views can be changed or manipulated by what we see, hear or read
You will look at social media and how the news is now ‘uncontrolled’ and 24/7. Is this a positive or negative?
You will look at who writes what you read. Sources. ‘Be careful what you read’
You will look at propaganda and how state sponsored news can only paint one side of a story
You will look at how even a map (indisputable, correct?) can distort our views. Did you know that the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania is 14 times the size of Northern Ireland; That the Kruger National Park in South Africa is bigger than Wales? Now check them out on a map because they certainly don’t appear to be!
You will look at social media and fake profiles, at FOMO; at online lives vs real lives
A picture paints a thousand words and the camera never lies – but is this true?
You will look at cancel culture. Can we just delete the past? Should we?
Interactive Activity
According to the creators:
"Harmony square is a game about fake news. The game’s setting is the idyllic Harmony Square, a small neighborhood mildly obsessed with democracy. You, the player, are hired as Chief Disinformation Officer. Over the course of 4 short levels, your job is to disturb the square’s peace and quiet by fomenting internal divisions and pitting its residents against each other."
"Scientists who worked with us on the development of this game found that playing Harmony Square improves people’s ability to spot manipulation techniques in social media posts, increases their confidence in spotting such techniques, and reduces their willingness to share manipulative content with people in their network. The results of this study were published in the journal Harvard Misinformation Review and can be found here."
Cross-Curricular Teaching Resources
If you do not have access to the padlet below, and are a member of teaching staff wanting to access these resources, please get in touch.