Berkeley College Libraries Addressing Fake News Dilemma

By Laurie McFadden, Jessica Kiebler, and Maria Deptula

At a time when an Internet search of the phrase “fake news” turns up over a billion hits, Berkeley College librarians knew they needed to take action to address the growing phenomenon and to re-inforce the importance of information and media literacy. In the spring of 2018, four Berkeley College librarians came together to brainstorm ideas for programming in order to bring the issue of fake news and its consequences under closer scrutiny by students.

The Newark campus library organized two highly successful panel discussions  that drew over 100 students.    The panel included a librarian, a law professor, a business professor and two social science professors.   Each panelist was asked to discuss how fake news impacted their discipline as well as individual thinking and our society.   Bradley Jenkins, Humanities and Social Sciences, Berkeley College School of Liberal Arts, teaches a course in Cognitive Psychology. “In this course there is a concept called ‘availability heuristics,’ and fake news uses this in an unethical manner all the time to socially engineer public opinion,” Professor Jenkins said. The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision.

Another faculty panelist, Christian Ehiobuche, PhD, Management, Larry L. Luing School of Business®, said: “Regardless of the academic definition, not all fake news is really fake or intended to mislead,” said “In America today the term fake news has become a weapon to discredit any media channel that one disagrees with. A news story is not fake simply because it is impolite or inconvenient.”

Three other campuses opted for in-class presentations. In collaboration with the humanities and social sciences faculty, librarians at the Paramus, Woodland Park and Woodbridge campuses recounted the history of fake news, examined recent examples of the impact of fake news and promoted resources and techniques that serve to identify bias, mis- and dis-information. The in-class presentations provided students with checklists and fact-checking resources as well as “guessing games” that tested their skills for identifying false news.  Our White Plains campus opted for a tabling event during which students could stop by and take the Factitious quiz and test themselves on identifying false stories. A librarian sat with them to answer questions and talk through their process. 

A Libguide was created on Fake News by the Berkeley librarians in order to provide students and faculty with the resources to effectively evaluate information sources to determine their validity.  

We appreciated all comments, but we valued even more the opportunity to put the library at the forefront of combating the “fake news.” We estimated that with all the events we reached out to more than 200 students and associates. However, even the few “aha” moments were worthy the efforts.

All Library Directors at Berkeley College, Laurie McFadden is the Director at Newark Campus, Jessica Kiebler is the Director at White Plains Campus, and Maria Deptual is the Director at Paramus Campus.