Detecting Deception: Tools to Fight Fake News

Teaching fact checking and verification is an essential part of journalism education. When a confusing media environment includes statements like ＂Truth is not truth＂ and ＂The president offered alternative facts,＂ students need to go beyond traditional reporting standards. They need to be trained to consider the presentation of reality in deciding if a statement is misleading or patently false. Detecting Deception applies the concepts of logical argumentation to supplement the verification techniques that are the stock and trade of any media professional.

Pithy and practical, Amanda Sturgill draws from present day news examples to help students recognize the most common bad arguments people make. Detecting Deception is an essential tool for training future journalists to build stories that recognize faulty arguments and hold their subjects to a higher standard.

Amanda Sturgill is an associate professor of journalism at Elon University, where she teaches classes in writing, copy editing, media analytics and digital strategy to undergraduate and graduate students. A self-described critical thinking maven, her students leave the university with a strong appreciation for the vital role of accurate and honest communication in free societies. Amanda was trained in the doctoral program at Cornell University and has gone on to publish communication technology and media and religion work in a variety of outlets. She was an editor on the two-volume Religion Online: How Digital Technology Is Changing the Way We Worship and Pray and an associate editor for The Golden Age of Data: Media Analytics in Study and Practice. She has a special interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning and, in particular, the integration of high-impact teaching practice in professional fields like journalism. She has run an international pedagogy research seminar, co-edited Mind the Gap: Global Learning at Home and Abroad and is an active member and presenter with the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. She presently chairs the Standing Committee on Teaching and sits on the board of directors of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.