Assignment #3: How to read the general media
Note: there are four parts in this assignment. Each part starts with a set of readings and concludes with a writing exercise in which you will create a post on the discussion board (in Blackboard). Hint: before starting at the top, skim through the document all the way to the end; make sure to note what you'll have to do in each section.
Follow the instructions closely.
Part I: Digital Literacy
READING
a. To appreciate why it's important for you, a 21st century college student, to work on becoming more digitally literate, read this excerpt from Ventimiglia and Pullman's (2016) article, "From Written to Digital: The New Literacy."
b. To further appreciate why it's important for any 21st century citizen to become more digitally literate, read Silverman and Singer-Vine's (2016) article, "Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says."
c. Read Wineburg's (2016) overview of the Stanford Digital Literacy study.
d. Test yourself on both the first set of example items and the second set of example items from the Stanford Digital Literacy study. Make sure you read through all the examples of students' correct and incorrect answers (and why their answers were correct versus incorrect).
e. Read the following documents, each of which explains several steps for improving digital literacy. Make a list of all the steps. (You should have more than 20 steps on your list.) Although it might feel as though these documents re- mention some of the same steps, overlap and repetition are always helpful for learning, and each document explains some steps that the other articles don't.
1. Inskeep's (2016) article, " A Finder's Guide to Facts"
2. Green's (2017) article, " The Honest Truth about Fake News ... and How Not to Fall for It"
3. Davis's (2016) article, "Fake or Real? How to Self-Check the News and Get the Facts"
4. The International Federation of Librarian Associations' (no date) Infographic
5. Facebook's (no date) list of "Tips to Spot False News"
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Go to the Discussion Board, Assignment #3, Part 1 on Blackboard. To make a new post, click on "Create Thread." In the subject box, put "first initial_last name", for example, "D_Johnson". Make a new post of at least 200 words in which you discuss the following:
1. Which three steps for improving digital literacy were you the most familiar with before reading these documents?
2. Which three steps were you the least familiar with before reading these documents?
3. Which three errors that students made in the Stanford Digital Literacy study (illustrated in either the first or the second set of example items, or both) surprised you the least - and why did those five errors surprise you the least?
Part II: Fake News
READING
To understand both writers' financial motivations to produce false digital information and readers' psychological tendencies to believe and promote false digital information, read
1. Pogue's (2017) article, "The Ultimate Cure for the Fake News Epidemic Will Be More Skeptical Readers,"
2. Borel's (2017) article, "Fact-Checking Won't Save Us from Fake News,"
3. Engelhaupt (2016) article, " You've Probably Been Tricked by Fake News and Don't Know It,"
4. BBC Trending's (2017) article, "The Rise of Left-Wing, Anti-Trump Fake News," and
5. the abstract of Bessi and Ferrara's (2016) empirical study, "Social Bots Distort the 2016 Presidential Election Online Discussion."
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Go to the Discussion Board, Writing Assignment #3, Part 2. Make a new post in which you
6. list, from the articles you read, the three exact quotes that intrigued you the most about WRITERS' financial motivation to produce false digital information;
7. list, from the articles you read, the three exact quotes that intrigued you the most about READERS' psychological tendencies to believe and promote false digital information; and
8. discuss, in at least 100 words, whether any of the Cognitive Biases you learned in Unit 1 play a role in these psychological tendencies. If
so, which ones? (I didn't crib the first assignment she's created - would take time but maybe worth it. If not, then delete this).
Part III: Rumors, Urban Legends and Satire
READING
Read about Snopes.com:
1. Read Wikipedia's (no date) entry on Snopes.com.
2. Read Eddy's (2014) article, "Meet the Mysterious Creator of Rumor- Debunking Site, Snopes.com."
3. Skim-read through FactCheck.org's (no date) fact-checking of rumors about the creators of Snopes.com.
b. From Snopes.com, find out the truth about five non-political Internet rumors or urban legends that are interesting to you.
1. By "non-political" we mean NOT "pertaining to the government or the public affairs of a country," meaning not about government, government officials, such as Congress members,or candidates (past or present) for political office.
2. Some examples of non-political Internet rumors or urban legends are the following: If you go swimming less than an hour after you eat, will you get stomach cramps? If you swallow chewing gum, will it take seven years to digest? Does our hair grow back darker or thicker after we shave it? Do we use only ten percent of our brains? Did Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine? If you cross your eyes for too long, will they stay that way?
c. Become familiar with this list of satire websites.
1. Watch CNN's Anderson Cooper admit to having been tricked by a satire website.
- You can adjust the speed of a YouTube video by following these directions.
- You can access a transcript of a YouTube video by following these directions.
2. Find two non-political instances, which are of interest to you, of other persons (besides Anderson Cooper) who have been tricked by a satire website.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Go to Discussion Board, Writing Assignment #3, Part 3. Make a new post of at least 200 words in which you do the following:
3. Describe the three non-political Internet rumors or urban legends that you found out about on Snopes.
- Provide a link for each Internet rumor or urban legend (using the technique you learned from the Course How To so that your link will show up as actual text, rather than just a URL or the word, Link).
- Explain why these Internet rumors or urban legends were of interest to you.
4. Describe the two non-political instances of persons (besides Anderson Cooper) who have been tricked by a satire website.
- Provide a link for each tricked-by-a-satire-website instances (using the technique you learned from the Course How To so that your link will show up as actual text, rather than just a URL or the word, Link).
- Explain why these tricked-by-a-satire-website instances were of interest to you.
Part IV: Fake News and Psychological Science
READING
a. To begin thinking about how techniques based on psychological science can override (in readers' minds) false digital information or even protect against it taking hold:
1. Read Pasek's (2017) article, "What Science Tells Us About How to Combat Fake News."
2. Read the graphic from Lewandowsky et al.'s (2012) article, "Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing."
3. Read Walton's (2017) article, "'Psychological Vaccine' May Protect Against Fake News, Alternative Facts," which is about a study conducted at Cambridge University.
4. Read Wood's (2017) article, " Psychological ‘Vaccine' Could Help Immunize Against Fake News," which is about the same study conducted at Cambridge University.
5. Read Bergland's (2017) article, "Fake News ‘Vaccine' Inoculates
Against ‘Alternative Facts'," which is again about that study conducted at Cambridge University; the repetition (with variation) is purposeful (as a mechanism for learning); at this point, you should understand the study well.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Go to Discussion Board, Writing Assignment #3, Part 4. Make a new post of at least 200 words in which you propose a way to override (in readers' minds) false digital information.
Assignment #5: How to synthesize psychological science
Part 1: How to synthesize psychological science
READING
For this part, you'll be reading and writing simultaneously.
a. To learn why it's important to synthesize psychological science and to learn how to synthesize psychological science, watch the following video, "How to Synthesize Psychological Science." (A transcript of this video is available here.) Make sure you learn (from the lecture video):
1. the difference between synthesizing psychological science and Mad Libbing it;
2. why it's preferred to place citations at the end of a sentence (in parentheses);
3. why you should almost always write about behavior and phenomena, not researchers and their studies; and
4. how to synthesize conflicting results (e.g., using "However, ...").
b. To practice synthesizing psychological science:
1. Read the abstract of Plester, Wood, and Joshi's (2009) article, "Exploring the Relationship Between Children's Knowledge of Text Message Abbreviations and School Literacy Outcomes."
- Identify and write down, using only one sentence, this article's major finding.
2. Read the abstract of Plester's (2008) article, "Txt Msg N School Literacy: Does Texting and Knowledge of Text Abbreviations Adversely Affect Children's Literacy Attainment?"
- Identify and write down, using only one sentence, this article's major finding.
3. Read the abstract of Kemp's (2010) article, "Texting Versus Txtng: Reading and Writing Text Messages, and Links with Other Linguistic Skills."
- Identify and write down, using only one sentence, this article's major finding.
4. Download and save on your computer this fillable PDF.
- Rename the unfilled PDF to be YourLastName_PSY430_ Synthesize_Fillable.pdf. In other words, add your last name to the beginning of the filename.
- On your computer, open a PDF writer, such as Preview, Adobe Reader, or the like. Be sure to open your PDF writer
app before you open the unfilled PDF from your computer.
- From within your PDF writer app, open the unfilled PDF, which you have already saved onto your computer and re-named.
- Use your PDF writer app to fill in the PDF.
5. On the first page of the PDF, fill in the blank spaces with
- a first Supporting Sentence, which will be the sentence you created in Step b1 above;
- a second Supporting Sentence, which will be the sentence you created in Step b2 above;
- a third Supporting Sentence, which will be the sentence you created in Step b3 above; and
- a Conclusion Sentence, which you will need to write.
- For this assignment, you do not need to use any citations. We will get to citations later in this unit.
c. To get more practice synthesizing psychological science:
1. Read the abstract of Palmer and Schloss's (2010) article, "An Ecological Valence Theory of Human Color Preference." Identify and write down, using only one sentence, the article's major finding.
2. Read the abstract of Schloss and Palmer's (2014) article, "The Politics of Color: Preferences for Republican Red versus Democratic Blue." Identify and write down, using only one sentence, the article's major finding.
3. Read the abstract of Schloss and Palmer's (2011) article, "Effects of University Affiliation and ‘School Spirit' on Color Preferences: Berkeley Versus Stanford." Identify and write down, using only one sentence, the article's major finding.
4. On the second page of the fillable PDF, fill in the blank spaces with
- a first Supporting Sentence that you created in Step c1. above;
- a second Supporting Sentence that you created in Step c2. above;
- a third Supporting Sentence that you created in Step c3. above; and
- a Conclusion Sentence.
- Again, you don't need to use any citations; we'll get to citations later.
d. To get even more practice synthesizing psychological science:
1. Read the abstract of Blom et al.'s (2010) article, "Effectiveness of an Internet Intervention for Family Caregivers of People with Dementia: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial." Identify and write down, using only one sentence, the article's major finding.
2. Read the abstract of Bonnert et al.'s (2017) article, "Internet-Delivered Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Adolescents with Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Randomized Controlled Trial." Identify and write down, using only one sentence, the article's major finding.
3. Read the abstract of Kaldo et al.'s (2015) article, "Guided Internet Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia Compared to a Control
Treatment - A Randomized Trial." Identify and write down, using only one sentence, the article's major finding.
4. Read the abstract of Kypri et al.'s (date) article, "Web-Based Alcohol Screening and Brief Intervention for University Students: A Randomized Trial." Identify and write down, using only one sentence, the article's major finding.
5. On the the third page of the fillable PDF, fill in the blank spaces with
- a first Supporting Sentence that you created in Step d1. above;
- a second Supporting Sentence that you created in Step d2. above;
- a third Supporting Sentence that you created in Step d3. above;
- a fourth Supporting (though potentially conflicting) Sentence that you created in Step d4. above; and
- a Conclusion Sentence.
- Again, no citations needed for this assignment.
Part 2: In-text citations
READING
a. Now, let's focus on citations.
1. In PSY330, you learned how to create APA-style citations for a reference list. One important thing to know when writing an academic paper to know is how to create "in-text citations"
2. By in-text, we mean a citation that is within the body of a scholarly article or term paper, rather than at the end in the reference list. The two most common elements in an in-text citation are the author name and year of publication (Johnson & Johnson, 2019).
3. However, where the in-text citation comes in a sentence can vary. It might come at the end of a sentence: "Citations are important (Johnson et al., 2019)." Or in the middle: "As suggested by Johnson et al., (2019), citations are important." Or at the beginning: "Johnson et al, (2019) argued that citations are important."
4. In this exercise, we're only focusing on just these kind of in-text citations.
5. The following handout is a good reference with all of the specific rules for in-text citations "Citation Help for APA, 6th Edition: In-text Citations."
Download this and read through it. You will be referring to it frequently
b. To practice writing in-text citations, open up the fillable PDF you created in Part 1.
1. Choose three of your previously written 9 sentences
- Re-write that sentence to place the in-text citation at the end of the sentence in parentheses
2. Choose another three of your previously written 9 sentences.
- Re-write that sentence to place the in-text citation at the beginning of the sentence.
3. Choose another three of your previously written 9 sentences.
- Re-write that sentence to place the in-text citation in the middle of the sentence.
4. See the handout (in a5 above) for some examples and specific rules regarding how to create in-text citations
5. Again, save your filled-in PDF.
Part 3: Plagarism
READING
a. It's likely that at some point in your college career, you've had someone talk to you (or you read about) plagiarism. But not everyone has had the same level of exposure to this very important topic, so we'll briefly touch upon it.
1. To refresh your memory about the more common versions of plagiarism, read the appendix from TurnitIn's (no date) article "The Plagiarism Spectrum."
2. To learn about more subtle forms of plagiarism, read Azman and Fox's (2013) PowerPoint, " Understanding Plagiarism ... With Some Help from Dr. Seuss." If you've never read Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, or it's been a long time since you read it (or had it read to you), watch this video prior to read Azman and Fox's (2013) PowerPoint.
3. To better understand what "common knowledge" is (and the situations in which common knowledge doesn't need to be cited), read Bowdoin College's (no date) article, "When to Cite."
4. Now, go back to the sentences you wrote in Part 1. Based on the criteria laid out by Azman and Fox, check your sentences for any evidence of plagiarism. If you find any plagiarism, change the sentences to eliminate it.
Part 4: Putting it all together
READING
Now it's time to put together everything you've learned in this Unit and synthesize psychological science from scratch, on your own.
Choose one of the psychological science topics on which you searched Google Scholar for scientific articles in Part 1 of Assignment #3: How to Find and Read Psychological Science (recall that you found and read three articles each for each of two different topics)
1. Locate on your computer the three PDFs of the three articles on this topic that you previously found via Google Scholar (or other search engine) and then downloaded and saved to your computer.
2. Refresh your memory of these three articles by looking over the notes you took on each of the three articles
3. You might also need to skim-read the three articles again.
For each of the three articles, write one sentence that synthesizes each article's major finding. When writing each of these three ‘synthetic' sentences (one for each of the three articles), remember what you learned in the "How to Synthesize Psychological Science" lecture video.
4. Remember to synthesize the finding and not Mad Lib it.
5. Remember to write about behavior and phenomena, not researchers and their studies.
6. Remember to make sure each of the three middle sentences has an in- text citation. The intro and conclusion sentence might or might not have in- text citations (depending upon the content).
7. If the main finding from one of the three articles conflicts with the main findings from the other two articles, remember how to synthesize conflicting results (e.g., using "However, ...).
8. If you don't remember how to do the above steps 1 through 4, go back and review the lecture video.
Now put these three sentences, each of which synthesizes an article's major finding, into a well-constructed (Hamburger Recipe) paragraph.
9. The three sentences you wrote will serve as your three supporting sentences for your paragraph.
10. Arrange the three sentences in a logical order (e.g., from a general study/finding to a more specific study/finding or from a more specific study/finding to a more general study/finding OR another order that makes the most sense to you).
11. Write a topic sentence that presents the main point of your paragraph. For examples of good topic sentences, look back at the topic sentences in the fillable PDF that you filled in for Part 1.
12. Write a conclusion sentence that holds your paragraph together.
b. Repeat the above steps 1 through 12 for the other psychological topic on which you searched Google Scholar for scholarly articles in Part 1 of Assignment #3. You should now have two well-constructed paragraphs, each of which synthesizes psychological science about a different topic, with no plagiarism and in-text citations where appropriate.
c. Go to the discussion board form Assignment #5:Synthesizing Psych Science, create a thread and make a new post containing your two paragraphs. In the subject box put your name, formatted "first initial_last name" e.g., "D_Johnson"
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.