I have been teaching about fake news for several years to high school students and at professional conferences. One thing I have learned is that despite knowing methods of verifying and thinking through the ideas presented, their lessons on fake news are derailed by a single image.

The brain works in strange ways. In a study by Lin et al. (2022), the researchers looked at the physical neurological differences in brains when looking at public warning signs. Signs that contained images only had the fastest recognized and reacted time. Signs that contained text only were the slowest; mixed image and text signs fell in the general space between (Lin et al., 2022). This means that image-only messages stay with a person longer and are recognized more easily. Hanci (2022) found that higher-achieving high school students better understood visuals.

“A photograph is usually looked at—seldom looked into.”

Ansel Adams

I have said before that I dislike calling students “digital natives”. They may have grown up with technology but they were not necessarily taught how to best use technology, analyze it, know when they are being tracked by advertisers, etc. Yes, they can use an online learning management system (LMS). Yes, they need my help almost daily accessing something from that LMS. Likewise, students were not taught about visual literacy. Baker defines visual literacy as “the competency to make meaning from what we see and to create images that convey implicit and explicit messages to others” (p. 3). Visual literacy is required to understand the cultural, ethical, and technical aspects of images (Hanci, 2022). Images can provide scaffolding to students giving them a different method of understanding the words (Baker, 2015). Images also create an emotional reaction that can entrench the student stronger than the words (Baker, 2015).

This image from The Economist magazine cover appears to show a contemplative President Obama considering the damage from the oil spill or his presidency (depending on which article you read). Instead, the image was modified. In the original, the tall president is leaning over to listen to a much shorter person. According to The Economist, they cropped the Admiral out and removed the woman to avoid confusing their patrons (Peters, 2010).

To identify reality, we need to teach students to question what they see. However, creating mistrust in all images can also lead to a different kind of manipulation (liar’s dividend) (Chesney & Citron, 2018). We should ask ourselves what we are feeling or reacting to in an image. Then pause to be sure we analyze these feelings and recognize them. A quick lateral reading on the web should help us determine the validity of the image. Both Shen et al.(2019) and Hanci (2022) agree that the more students (and adults!) practice with images, the better they can recognize manipulations. Practice is the key.

Quick…

How does this make you feel?

Image by Robbie Barber (2023) of Piper (This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

References:

Baker, L. (2015). How Many Words Is a Picture Worth? Integrating Visual Literacy in Language Learning with Photographs. English Teaching Forum, 53(4), 2–13.

Chesney, R. and Citron, D. K. (2018). Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security (July 14, 2018). 107 California Law Review 1753 (2019), U of Texas Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 692, U of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2018-21, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3213954.

Hanci, H. (2022). Investigation of high school students’ visual literacy levels. International Journal of Research in Education and Science (IJRES), 8(3), 611-625. https://doi.org/10.46328/ijres.2980

Lin, W., Li, Z., Zhang, X., Gao, Y., & Lin, J. (2022). Electrophysiological evidence for the effectiveness of images versus text in warnings. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-28230-x

Peters, Jeremy. (July 5, 2010). On The Economist’s Cover, Only a Part of the Picture. The New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/on-the-economists-cover-only-a-part-of-the-picture/

Shen, C., Kasra, M., Pan, W., Bassett, G. A., Malloch, Y., & O’Brien, J. F. (2019). Fake images: The effects of source, intermediary, and digital media literacy on contextual assessment of image credibility online. New Media & Society, 21(2), 438–463. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818799526