One news story across six platforms: the Cwmderwen flood

What you are doing

One evening, the river in Cwmderwen flooded. In three hours, six pieces of content appeared about it: a video from a local walker, a viral post, a community group, a news website, a TV bulletin and a fact-check. One of them spread a false claim to almost half a million people. You will judge how reliable each source is, use the reach figures to explain how the false claim spread, compare how two platforms represented the same event, and write a correction that references its sources.

Key words

• Online news: news published and spread through digital platforms connected to the internet. Traditional news: newspapers, television and radio.
• Citizen journalism: news made and shared by people who are not professional journalists, often on social media.
• Misinformation: false or misleading information, whether or not the person sharing it knows it is false. Fake news: false information made to look like real news.
• Immediacy: how fast news reaches people. Virality: how fast content spreads from person to person. Audience reach: how many people see it.

Step 1: read and highlight

Read Items A to F with a partner. Use one colour for facts that someone could check (a time, a place, a named person, an official statement). Use a second colour for claims with no evidence. Write your colour key here:

Checkable facts: ____________________    Claims with no evidence: ____________________

Step 2: the reliability grid

For each item, ask three questions. Who made it, and can I check who they are? What evidence does it give? Does another source agree? Score it from 1 (do not trust) to 5 (very reliable) and give a reason.

Step 3: what the numbers show

(a) Item B was posted at 18:05. What time did a professional news organisation first say the claim was false, and how long was that after Item B? Give your answer in hours and minutes.

(b) At 22:00, add up the views of the three items that told the truth about the dam: D, E and F. How many times more views did Item B have than all three together? Give your answer to one decimal place.

(c) Work out the share rate (shares ÷ views × 100) at 22:00 for Item B and for Item F, to one decimal place. Which was shared at a higher rate? Why did it still reach fewer people? Use the word immediacy.

Step 4: same event, two representations

Compare how Item B and Item D represent the same evening.

Now write one paragraph of 100 to 150 words: Why did the false claim reach more people than the truth? Use at least one figure from the reach table and at least two of these terms: virality, immediacy, audience reach, misinformation, citizen journalism. Include the part played by ordinary users in Item C.

Step 5: correct it, and reference it

Write a calm reply of 3 or 4 sentences to the worried member in Item C. Say what is true, what is false, and how you know. Do not make fun of anyone.

Now list the two most reliable sources your reply is based on. For each one give: the organisation or author, the title or headline, the type of platform, and the time it was published or updated.

Step by step

1. 5 min Read “What you are doing” and the key words.
2. 8 min Read Items A to F in pairs. Highlight in two colours.
3. 14 min Fill in the reliability grid. A reason for every score.
4. 8 min Answer Step 3 (a) to (c). Show your working.
5. 10 min Complete the comparison table and write the paragraph on your own.
6. 10 min Write the reply and the two-source reference list.

If you finish early

• Plan the searches you would do to check the dam photo yourself. Write three exact searches, including one that uses quotation marks and one that uses a minus sign to leave out results. Say what a reverse image search would tell you.
• Suggest one feature a platform could add to slow down posts like Item B. Then write one sentence on why it might be a problem for free speech.
• Think of a real news event from the last two years. On which platform did you first hear about it? Was that a traditional or an online news source?