It is important for students to not only understand and practice how to detect disinformation in their daily consumption of social media and online content but also to practice producing and posting content that counters extreme and/or untrue content. This workshop is intended as a guide to creating student-centred classroom activities focused on writing replies to controversial or untrue posts on social media. The 6 steps include finding/summarizing the original post, using evidence and credible sources to provide alternative explanations, raising suspicion, constructing the reply, checking for emotional language, and posting the reply. In addition, participants will explore models of classroom media literacy, critical thinking skills, and structured approaches to expressing opinions and presenting arguments through classroom discussion and debate.
Dr. Adam Mastandrea is an Assistant Professor in the Vilnius University Faculty of Philology. Adam holds a PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Hawai’i Manoa, an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Montana, and a BA in Philosophy from Montana State University. Before joining the Vilnius University Philology faculty, he served as a U.S. Department of State English Language Fellow in Lithuania (2019-2022) and has taught in Lithuania, Japan, Montana, Poland, and Hawaii. Adam conducts research in the areas of language teaching pedagogy and media literacy in the language classroom.