Many students believed the tree octopus article to be credible because it had “real” pictures.

  – Fake News and the “Wild Wide Web”: A Study of Elementary Students’ Reliability Reasoning

In the Netherlands, only 2 out of 27 school children (7 per cent) recognised the website as being a hoax; results that are worse, even, than those of the 2007 US Study, where the website was recognised as being unreliable by slightly more than 6 out of 53 school children (11 per cent).

  – “Save the Pacific Northwest tree octopus”: a hoax revisited. Or How Vulnerable are school children to fake news?

Are children able to tell apart what’s real and what’s fake online? It is possible to find out at once through this website about a tree octopus: https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/. Are they able to search for specific information independently? Are they able to circumvent the risks online? Research shows that despite being called digital natives, students do need help.

Wikipedia and The Library of Congress say that the tree octopus website, created in 1998, is “commonly used in Internet literacy classes in schools”. In 2007, researchers tested the ability of 13-year-olds to tell if this website was fake and found that most could not. In 2017, a group of Dutch researchers replicated this study with 11 and 12-year-olds “in a slightly altered form”. Again, it was found that most of the children in the study believed that they needed to save the tree octopus.

The children were not asked if the website was real because researchers felt that might have alerted them to the possibility that the website was not real. Instead, they were asked a number of questions after they accessed the website. One such question was If Greenpeace were to ask you to save this octopus, would you support this and sign? Many said yes.

Researchers are calling for educators to train children in media, information, and news literacy. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably. The concepts constituting each literacy might appear in the make-up of other literacies.

Media literacy presumably focuses on media in all its forms. Students have to understand the following. There are different types of media which is plural for medium. Media ranges from traditional forms such as traditional print, radio and television to new media such as social media. There are different actors with different purposes. Students are now also able to create content. It would be useful to understand the usefulness and risks associated with different types of media.

Information literacy refers to being able to find, evaluate and use information from different sources for a purpose. In 2020, education researchers, Pilgrim and Vasinda tested the information literacy of 354 students from grade 1-5 (roughly equivalent to lower to upper primary here) in America.

Children in their study were tasked with finding information on dolphins, through the Google search engine. This would require them to type in keywords in the search function – spelling was an issue with some children. They were asked if they could tell how many websites their search showed. This would require them to know where to look. When the researchers tried it, they found 285,000,000 results. The children were then asked to find out specifically what dolphins ate. This would have required them to “narrow information” through editing the search terms. They were also asked if the websites found were relevant and credible and how they could find the website which “will provide the best information about your topic”.

It was found that the older children got, the better they were able to deal with the various aspects of this dolphin search task. Children of all ages performed better at narrowing the search from dolphins in general to what dolphins eat. More than 80% of grade 3-5 students could tell which websites were relevant to their search. Grade 5 students performed the best when it came to evaluating which website would provide the best information and if a particular website was credible. Even among the Grade 5 students, only about half said they could tell which website provided the best information. Around 7 in 10 Grade 5 students could not tell if a website was credible.

These researchers (Pilgrim & Vasinda, 2020) had also tried the tree octopus test with another batch of kids from Grade 1—5 and again they found that “65% of the students trusted the information”.

What we know so far, is that by around 11-12, students should be able to search for specific information online. Even at teenage, many are unable to determine which website is the best for their purpose and if a website is credible.

News literacy refers to understanding the actors behind and process of news production and consumption. A lot has been said about identifying fake news. Schools do teach students how to identify news which is fake.

There are arguably other literacies related to news (apart from news literacy) which students would need to make decisions when they get to. If something belongs in the realm of facts, then all one has to do is verify in whatever means necessary for the situation. This is a form of due diligence.

There are at least two other literacies students must be trained in.

The first is the ability to understand the implications of a news article which presents nothing but the facts. They would for example need to know what the information presented means for them or how their decision might turn based on the information in the news. Real news does tend to bestow legitimacy. This however may not always be the best criterion for selection for a particular purpose – Why did you go with this vendor? This vendor was featured in the news.

The other is the ability to form a view based on the facts presented in real news. The news in and of itself is in the fundamental sense, a record of noteworthy happenings. Once an event has been placed on record as real news, there may be discussions. A key difference in today’s media landscape is its social and participatory nature. News outfits now have social media accounts and articles are posted online. These will give rise to discussion threads. While it may be possible to train students to spot fake accounts, real people with a vested interest in the matter one way or another and partisans, it would be a lot more difficult to teach them to form a view which is truly independent. It is very easy make a comment online which can shape the tone of ensuing discussion in a manner which deviates from or obfuscates the truth. Also, a normally reasonable and sensible person may take an incorrect view. In these situations, it would be difficult for the untrained (in news literacies and subject matter knowledge) to ascertain the truth.

Many children said they believed the tree octopus was real because of the pictures on the website.

It’s not always easy to spot a fiddler.

The Brain Dojo