Having students interact with social media can also provide an opportunity for them to become critical consumers of it. Head et al. describe that 89% of college-age students are getting news via social media, but that there exists a gap between how students are taught to rely on library databases for academic research and how they can apply this information when determining the reliability of what they find on social media (3). This creates a significant concern for how students consume social media.
Breakstone et al. develop this conversation by adding that commonly taught source-credibility checklists or tests like the CRAAP test fail to imitate the kind of fact-checking that actual fact-checkers do when evaluating a source’s credibility (28-29). Moreover, their discussion of how the CRAAP test can be circumvented by many cleverly-designed but ultimately politically (or financially) motivated websites serves to demonstrate that students need a more complete understanding of source credibility, and not necessarily simply that a source is fake/real (30).
Using social media in a structured classroom environment can provide students opportunities to discuss, apply rhetorical principles to, read about, and practice determining the credibility of what they encounter on the Internet.