Digital Literacies and Climate Change: Exploring Reliability and Truth(s) with Pre-service Teachers

Abstract

Purpose – To consider the ways two pre-service teachers evaluated digital information sources about climate change in order to highlight the challenges and possibilities of an instructional approach aimed at cultivating digital literacies about climate change among pre-service teachers.
Design – The qualitative research design focuses on two pre-service teachers’ written reflections and participation during class discussions across two sessions in a content literacy course. The theoretical framework that guided the analysis was civic media literacy.
Findings – Findings of this study highlight conceptions of reliability that two participants held (reliability as relative or as evidentiary support) as they worked with web sources about climate change. These conceptions reflected a denialist orientation to climate change science.
Practical Implications – This study contributes to the literature that considers the ways pre-service teachers work with websites about socioscientific topics. It highlights how an instructional model can help promote digital literacy practices that center on evaluating the reliability of websites about climate change. It also includes a companion framework called fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry picking, and conspiracy theories (FLICC) that can be used to guide students to better understand techniques and practices of science denial.

Full text

Best Practices in Teaching Digital Literacies
Digital Literacies and Climate Change: Exploring Reliability and Truth(s) with Pre-
service Teachers
James S. Damico, Alexandra Panos, Michelle Myers,
Article information:
To cite this document: James S. Damico, Alexandra Panos, Michelle Myers, "Digital
Literacies and Climate Change: Exploring Reliability and Truth(s) with Pre-service
Teachers" In Best Practices in Teaching Digital Literacies. Published online: 10 Aug
2018; 93-107.
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93
CHAPTER 7
DIGITAL LITERACIES AND
CLIMATE CHANGE: EXPLORING
RELIABILITY AND TRUTH(S)
WITH PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS
James S. Damico, Alexandra Panos, and Michelle Myers
STRUCTURED ABSTRACT
Purpose – To consider the ways two pre-service teachers evaluated digital infor-
mation sources about climate change in order to highlight the challenges and
possibilities of an instructional approach aimed at cultivating digital literacies
about climate change among pre-service teachers.
Design – The qualitative research design focuses on two pre-service teachers’
written reections and participation during class discussions across two ses-
sions in a content literacy course. The theoretical framework that guided the
analysis was civic media literacy.
Findings – Findings of this study highlight conceptions of reliability that two
participants held (reliability as relative or as evidentiary support) as they
worked with web sources about climate change. These conceptions reected a
denialist orientation to climate change science.
Practical Implications – This study contributes to the literature that considers
the ways pre-service teachers work with websites about socioscientic topics.
It highlights how an instructional model can help promote digital literacy prac-
tices that center on evaluating the reliability of websites about climate change.
Best Practices in Teaching Digital Literacies
Literacy Research, Practice and Evaluation, Volume 9, 93–107
Copyright © 2018 by Emerald Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 2048-0458/doi:10.1108/S2048-045820180000009007
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94 JAMES S. DAMICO ET AL.
It also includes a companion framework called fake experts, logical fallacies,
impossible expectations, cherry picking, and conspiracy theories (FLICC)
that can be used to guide students to better understand techniques and prac-
tices of science denial.
Keywords: Climate change; digital literacies; online reading; FLICC; climate
denial; critical literacy; media literacy; civic education
What does it mean to be digitally literate at this historical moment? There is
no simple or straightforward answer to this question. Digital literacies vary a
great deal and mean different things for different people, because they are “so
tied up with being human” and people have “idiosyncratic habits and uses”
(Rowsell et al., 2016) while reading and writing online. One response to this
question points to acquired skills in working with information and communi-
cation technologies, including the ability to compose, publish, and distribute
multimodal texts (photos, video, blog posts, etc.) through a range of networked
technologies and tools, such as social media. While understanding of and facil-
ity with existing and emerging digital tools remains important, the direction
our response to this question takes is toward the aims of digital literacy. That
is, we consider the about what suggested by the question and contend that we
are always being and becoming digitally literate about something. Toward this
end, in this chapter we engage with the topic of climate change and explore the
question, what does it mean for teacher education students to be digitally literate
about climate change?
We highlight ndings when an instructional approach we designed, called
Digital Source Evaluation and Discussion, was used to guide future middle school
and secondary level teachers across content areas to evaluate the reliability of
information sources about climate change. There are four key features of this
instructional approach: (1) select a set of digital information sources with dif-
ferent perspectives about a complex topic; (2) provide students with an opportu-
nity to make their thinking visible as they evaluate the reliability of the sources;
(3) ensure that students traverse the same sources multiple times to reect upon
and revise their reliability evaluations; and (4) create opportunities for them to
deliberate the reliability merits of the sources. Findings from our research high-
light the value of a multi-step evaluation process and the importance of dialogue
across different perspectives through a whole group discussion process (Damico &
Panos, 2016, 2017). In this chapter, we employ a “civic media literacy” frame-
work (Masyada & Washington, 2016) and focus on the ways two pre-service
teachers, Megan and Luke, evaluated digital information sources about climate
change. Our primary goal is to highlight the challenges and possibilities of our
instructional approach aimed to help pre-service teachers cultivate digital litera-
cies about climate change. We conclude with a call for educators working with
learners across age groups to directly take on the topics of climate change and
climate change denial.
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Digital Literacies and Climate Change 95
CIVIC MEDIA LITERACY
Determining the reliability of information in our expanding digital world is chal-
lenging. The ways we read and engage with digital information sources is shaped
by our particular experiences, knowledge, and perspectives, which inevitably are
partial and limited. The ways each of us engages with a topic like climate change
and evaluates websites about it are rooted in our own knowledge, beliefs, and
experiences. Our knowledge and analytical skills can also be slight when address-
ing politically divisive topics (Kahne & Bowyer, 2017; Lavine, Johnston, &
Steenbergen, 2012; Taber & Lodge, 2006). The political beliefs that we hold can
lead us to different understandings about basic facts about politically conten-
tious events, including the Iraq War (Kull, Ramsay, & Lewis, 2003), income ine-
quality (Bartels, 2009), and climate change (McCright & Dunlap, 2011). There
is also the likelihood that we live in information “echo chambers” (Jamieson &
Cappella, 2008; Manjoo, 2008) or media bubbles in which our views and knowl-
edge are validated and reinforced – where we do not engage substantively with
different views. Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter with their
algorithmic “likes,” are designed to promote these outcomes. Thus, it is not sur-
prising that youth and young adults have difculty detecting misleading online
information (Wineburg, McGrew, Breakstone, & Ortega, 2016) and evaluating
the accuracy of online truth claims about controversial public issues (Kahne &
Bowyer, 2017).
Masyada and Washington (2016) proposed a model of civic education that
draws from work by the National Association for Media Literacy Education
(NAMLE) to help frame the challenges of living in a saturated digital media
world. NAMLE contends that media literacy education “requires active inquiry
and critical thinking about the messages we receive and create” in order to cul-
tivate “informed, reective and engaged participants essential for a democratic
society” (2007). These inquiry and critical literacy practices include: asking
and pursuing questions about authorship and sponsorship of sources to detect
biases, rigorously evaluating claims and evidence to discern faulty reasoning,
and carefully considering how one’s own beliefs, values, knowledge, and per-
spectives affect the meaning-making process (Baildon & Damico, 2011). It is
especially important to apply these skills when working with digital informa-
tion sources about complex socioscientic topics like climate change (Sadler &
Zeidler, 2004), which are rooted in science principles, are controversial, and dif-
cult to solve, and where there is a range of views about whether anthropogenic
(human-caused) climate change is happening and about what, if anything, needs
to be done to address it.
Despite the overwhelming consensus among climate change scientists that
anthropogenic climate change is occurring (Cook et al., 2013, 2016; Mooney,
Duraiappah, & Larigauderie, 2013; Oreskes & Conway, 2010), signicant seg-
ments of the US population disagree with, ignore, or are unaware of these
scientic results. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has cap-
tured a range of perspectives about climate change in the US. Results from their
Six America’s survey (which examines people’s climate change beliefs, attitudes,
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96 JAMES S. DAMICO ET AL.
risk perceptions, values, motivations, policy preferences, and perceived barriers
to action) identied six distinct US audiences with unique climate change pro-
les (Leiserowitz & Smith, 2010; Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Smith,
2010; Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Smith, 2011; Leiserowitz et al.,
2014; Leiserowitz et al., 2016). These proles include alarmed, concerned, cau-
tious, disengaged, doubtful, and dismissive. People with an alarmed climate change
prole believe anthropogenic climate change is happening and that an urgent
comprehensive response is necessary. At the other end, those with a dismissive
prole believe anthropogenic climate change isn’t happening, poses no serious
threat, and any attempts to enact climate change policy or regulations must be
actively resisted.
The work of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has pro-
vided the foundation for our ongoing project that explores the ways undergradu-
ate pre-service teachers, across varied climate change proles and disciplinary
backgrounds, evaluate websites about climate change. Our project has focused
on creating opportunities for future teachers to become more aware of the ways
they determine the reliability of websites – the factors or internal criteria they
employ that lead them to favorable or unfavorable reliability evaluations. This
process also involves ensuring they have a chance to engage directly with conict-
ing or opposing claims and evidence about climate change (Damico, Panos, &
Baildon, 2018).
Ultimately, consequential decisions we make individually and collectively need
to be based on accurate, trustworthy information. If we, as teacher educators,
are committed to preparing teachers to best work with technologically savvy and
connected youth in our “partisan age” (Kahne & Bowyer, 2017), we contend this
commitment must center on better understanding the ways we value or devalue
information sources about the complex, pressing topic of climate change.
INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL TO PROMOTE
DIGITAL LITERACIES
The instructional model, Digital Source Evaluation and Discussion, we developed
to guide students to evaluate the reliability of web sources about climate change,
emphasizes four components: select diverse sources, make thinking visible, trav-
erse sources multiple times, and deliberate reliability designations. We used a
handwritten packet for students to note their reliability evaluations as they made
these traversals and they used an online tool, the Critical Web Reader (CWR),
to support focused, critical analysis of the sources while working in an Internet
browser (Baildon & Damico, 2011). Here we describe four key components of
our instructional model and how they support digital literacy practices.
Select Diverse Digital Information Sources
We selected diverse sources based on two main criteria: its orientation to climate
change and its type or genre. We wanted to know the extent to which the source
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Digital Literacies and Climate Change 97
indicated climate change is happening and the source’s stance on the severity
of its impacts. We wanted a range of perspectives here. One source, for exam-
ple, we selected is a webpage from British Petroleum (BP) describing how it is
dealing with climate change. This source aligns with the scientic consensus on
climate change (i.e., it is happening and is human-caused) and argues for doing
something to address the issue and its impacts by using carbon credits and taxes
to regulate carbon use. This is an unexpected stance for a large oil and gas com-
pany. We also chose sources whose orientations to climate change opposed each
other and represented distinct types or genres (corporate web page, popular
press article, leading scientic organization, and libertarian think tank).
Table 1 provides more detail for each of these four sources.
Make Thinking Visible
Because reading online often includes snap judgments about a source’s reliabil-
ity, we asked students to make their thinking visible by noting and explaining
their reliability evaluations using a scale of Highly Reliable, Somewhat Reliable,
Somewhat Unreliable, and Unreliable. These were not expected to be fully formed
thoughts or well-constructed paragraphs, rather a glimpse into their ideas at the
moment. In order for students to reect critically on their thinking, they need
space and time to get ideas on paper or into digital form.
Traverse Sources Multiple Times
In order to make that visible thinking worthwhile, we also asked students to eval-
uate and explain their thinking for each source at three different time intervals
across the activity. In the handwritten packet, students noted their reliability eval-
uations (Highly Reliable, Somewhat Reliable, Somewhat Unreliable, Unreliable)
after each of three traversals: (1) with just a screenshot of the source; (2) after
viewing the full source and using the Critical Web Reader to answer six critical
questions (Who created the source? Why was it created? What claims are made? Are
claims well supported? Explain. Are there biases or points of view? To what extent is
this source reliable?); and (3) after discussing the reliability merits of each source
through a whole class discussion. This ensured that students “traversed” the same
sources multiple times and in different ways in order to reect upon, and possibly
to revise, their reliability evaluations. Making sense of a screenshot is different
than having full access to each source with working hyperlinks, which differs from
a whole group discussion.
Deliberate Reliability Merits of Sources
After students worked independently to traverse the sources, we created time
for students to discuss and deliberate the merits of each source with their peers.
The whole group discussion took the form of a forum we called “Take a Stand.”
For each source, we asked participants to get up from their seats and move to one of
four quadrants of the classroom that corresponded with their nal rating of each
source (Highly Reliable, Somewhat Reliable, Somewhat Unreliable, Unreliable).
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98 JAMES S. DAMICO ET AL.
Table 1. Diverse Sources.
British Petroleum (BP) Christian Science Monitor (CSM)
Type: Oil company web page about climate
change [http://www.bp.com/en/global/
corporate/sustainability/the-energy-future/
climate-change.html]
Type: Popular press news report [http://www.
csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0730/Prominent-
climate-change-denier-now-admits-he-was-
wrong-video]
Purpose: Acknowledge climate change is
happening and demonstrate its active
response in addressing the challenge
Purpose: Describe prominent scientist’s shift in
perspective about climate change (from denial
to acceptance)
Key claims about climate change: It is real,
BP is actively addressing the challenge, and
governments have primary responsibility for
mitigating effects
Key claims about climate change: It is real,
human-caused, and new scientic research that
offers additional evidence/proof
Beliefs continuum: Concerned/Cautious.
Involved in attempting to shape policy and
legislation to support own economic model
Beliefs continuum: Alarmed. Not directly
involved in attempting to shape public and
policy debates on climate change
Complexity: Contains multiple purposes across
the site; includes multiple reports with unclear
authorship; has a counterintuitive perspective
(an oil company arguing for addressing the
issue of climate change)
Complexity: Newspaper name invokes religious
perspectives about a socioscientic issue; news
story is connected to an Op-Ed from the
New York Times
Reliability: Somewhat unreliable. The site
includes information consistent with ndings
of the IPCC, yet its clear commitments to
fossil fuel production impugn its credibility
Reliability: Somewhat reliable. It is a reputable
journalistic source with scientic ndings that
align with broad-based research consensus.
Its emphasis on one person’s account limits its
overall reliability
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate
Change (NIPCC)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC)
Type: Nongovernmental group of scientists
sponsored by advocacy organization
[http://www.ipcc.ch/]
Type: Website from scientic authority on climate
change [http://www.ipcc.ch/]
Purpose: Impugn scientic consensus about
anthropogenic climate change, provides
alternative view to IPCC
Purpose: Assesses science on climate change and
produces summary reports
Key claims about climate change: Human effect
is likely to be small compared to natural
variability, and will produce benets as well
as costs
Key claim: Scientic evidence is clear for
anthropogenic climate change
Beliefs continuum: Dismissive. Very involved in
attempting to shape public and policy debates
on climate change
Beliefs continuum: Alarmed. Very involved in
attempting to shape public and policy debates
on climate change
Complexity: Site name and purpose link to
foremost scientic body; political purpose
couched in terms of “debate” framing; copious
information in links, reports, videos, etc.
Complexity: Extensive amount of scientic and
policy information, including links, reports,
meeting minutes, etc.; also with science
vocabulary
Reliability: Unreliable. Site was created to
respond to the IPCC site and it represents an
extreme minority view in terms of the science,
which reects the biases of the sponsoring
organizations
Reliability: Highly reliable. It is the leading
scientic authority on the topic of climate
change and is an intergovernmental group
publishing its reports
Note: This table rst appears in Damico and Panos (2017).
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Digital Literacies and Climate Change 99
We then went around the room for each quadrant and asked participants to
justify their evaluations of the source. We also encouraged students to “Take a
Stand” and attempt to convince other members of their class to revise their evalu-
ations of the source. We gave each quadrant of students some time to justify their
ratings and also allowed time for rebuttal or debate. We went through this process
for each of the four sources then asked participants to return to their own seats
and note any modications to their evaluations.
We now highlight the ways two pre-service teachers, Megan and Luke, moved
through this model and what their experience reveals about some of the core
challenges and possibilities of cultivating digital literacies about global climate
change.
MEGAN AND LUKE
Megan and Luke were in different sections of a required content literacy course.
We selected these students for closer examination for several reasons. First, they
represent different academic backgrounds: Megan is in mathematics education
and Luke is in social studies with an emphasis in history education. Second,
each was an active contributor in their whole class discussions, thus providing
additional data to assess their thinking throughout the entire classroom activ-
ity. Third, we wanted to consider students with relatively similar climate change
proles according to the Six America’s climate change survey (Maibach, Roser-
Renouf, & Leiserowitz, 2009). Megan and Luke fell in the middle range. Finally,
we were intrigued that Megan and Luke each deemed the NIPCC and IPCC
sources to be reliable despite their sources’ opposing perspectives, claims, and
evidence about climate change.
Megan: Mathematics Education
Megan is a white female mathematics and computer science major. According to
the Six America’s survey, her climate prole is “disengaged” which seemed to t
for Megan. In the rst part of our classroom activity, she answered the question:
What do you know about climate change? with “not much at all” and indicated
that she gets most of her information about climate change from “people who
mention/talk about it once in a while.”
Across the activity, Megan found the IPCC and NIPCC sources most reliable.
While she found the IPCC source most reliable after her initial rating, she found
the NIPCC most reliable after having access to the full source. She found the
Christian Science Monitor (CSM) source least reliable after both of these rat-
ing opportunities. Following the group discussion, she identied both the CSM
source and the NIPCC source as more reliable and saw no reason to change her
evaluations of either BP, which she rated Somewhat Reliable, or the IPCC, which
she rated as Highly and Somewhat Reliable. In general, Megan deemed impor-
tant how frequently a website is updated as well as the original date of the post.
Websites that update too frequently come across to Megan as less reliable and
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100 JAMES S. DAMICO ET AL.
that “the sweet spot” is around once a year. Any less and the source can come
across as too old and no longer relevant.
Reliability as Relative
As Megan worked through the instructional model, we discerned her holding a
stable conception of reliability as relative. We can most clearly see this on display
when she compared the NIPCC and IPCC sources. While other students pointed
out that the NIPCC and IPCC cannot both be reliable because they argue oppos-
ing claims, Megan contended it was possible for the two sources to have compet-
ing claims and still both be reliable because the sources are “thinking about it [in]
a different way.” She maintained that there are different sides of an argument and
she considered neither side wrong or incorrect, as the following exchange with
another student highlights.
Jennifer: And I think that’s so contradictory and if we have so much research that supports
humans and their effect on climate change then why are we suddenly believing people that don’t
even list their scientists’ names, that have no resources, and started to write a book in spite of…
James [researcher]: Ok. Which is very different than what you were saying, Megan. …Jennifer
is saying well, their claim that they’re making is just wrong. It’s not just about two sides. It’s just
wrong. It’s not true. Therefore, it’s not reliable. You’re saying well it’s important to have differ-
ent perspectives…
Megan: But how do you know it’s wrong? Because if you’re saying it’s wrong, it’s your opinion.
Your opinion is that it’s wrong.
Here Megan implies that climate change science is a matter of opinion rather
than the results of a scientic research process that yielded a consensus about
anthropogenic climate change. She did, however, to point out that sources do
need to support or “back up” their claims with facts. When discussing the CSM
source, she noted:
If they would have backed that up with stuff and showed a link and showed something else
but the fact [was] that it was all opinion and no facts. Like some of it was facts but it was their
opinion on the facts.
The idea of reliability as relative for Megan is also evident in her concern that
factual sources might be supported by or linked from sources that are not factual.
In the class discussion, she raised questions about how to assess the reliability of
sources because the process is “like a chain” as sources backup their claims with
other sources:
Ok, just in general one problem with this stuff, I mean we can say that it needed to have sources
to back up the statistics, but like if you go to the sources that back this up then where does
that source back up to what source? Because you obviously backup something so when do you
know what sources backup from actually is a reliable one. Do you know what I’m saying? It’s
like a chain.
Luke: Social Studies Education
Luke is a white male social studies major with US History specialization. His cli-
mate change prole was “cautious,” which, according to the Six America’s survey,
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Digital Literacies and Climate Change 101
is someone who holds a “relatively weak” view that global warming is occurring,
hasn’t thought much about it, and tends not to perceive it as dangerous to them-
selves or others, but acknowledges that it might be harmful to future generations
(p. 45). In response to the question, What do you know about climate change?
Luke wrote, “It is caused mostly by greenhouse gases.” He also identied “friends,
Twitter, Government, and commercials” as people and places where he gets his
information about climate change.
Throughout the class activity Luke identied the IPCC source as the most
reliable and BP as the least reliable. His general assessments of three of the four
sources were sensible as he identied BP as an oil company with an agenda, the
main claim of the NIPCC source to be presenting scientists who disagree with
the IPCC, and the IPCC source as well-supported by scientic reports. The CSM
source proved to be different. He assessed its purpose as, “To prove to some reli-
gious readers that Global Warming exist[s].” This is a misreading of the source.
The CSM is a popular press publication for a general audience; it is not solely or
primarily for “religious readers.” Luke did identify both the IPCC and NIPCC
sources as highly reliable and offered similar justications for these evaluations.
We consider this issue of reckoning with competing claims and evidence later in
this chapter.
Reliability as Evidentiary Support
The primary criterion of reliability for Luke was evidentiary support for main
claims. For example, in the whole class discussion about the NIPCC source, he
said: “I wasn’t going to judge it based off of what they were saying. I was judging
it more based off of the resources they had…” and then added:
I wasn’t going to like judge the sources based on whether they were for or against like global
warming. I thought… I just wanted to like base it more on like how well they like, I don’t know,
crafted the argument. Whether they had it supported.
Luke had a similar take with the IPCC source, noting, “This source seems very
reliable because it uses data and assessments to make their point.”
For Luke, the number of citations or links to scientic studies was also a proxy
for reliability. He identied the main claim of the NIPCC source as, “Scientists
may disagree on climate change” and contended that this main claim was sup-
ported because “the readers are given a multitude of things to read that support
the argument.” With the IPCC source, he noted that it is “currently in its Sixth
Assessment cycle which reports uses of greenhouse gas. Claims are supported by
data given through reports.”
The criterion of evidentiary support also seemed to dovetail with a criterion
that a source should possess minimal bias. With the NIPCC source, he wrote:
I think this source is very reliable because it doesn’t seem to have many bias or have an agenda
they are trying to get across, rather it objectively looks at global warming from a few perspectives.
Of note, Luke seemed to view both government and non-government sources
as trustworthy. With the IPCC, he wrote that “it is also a government website so
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102 JAMES S. DAMICO ET AL.
I would assume most information is accurate (hopefully).” With just an initial
scan of the NIPCC source, Luke noted, “This seems like a reliable source at rst
glance because it provides primary and secondary resources and is not associated
with the government.”
Megan and Luke. The reliability criteria Megan and Luke employed embody
the characteristics of climate change denial. Both do not accept, or are unaware
of, the overwhelming consensus among climate change research scientists that
climate change is real and human-caused. Instead, Megan and Luke ascribe to
a view that anthropogenic climate change is debatable with each side offering
distinct yet reliable perspectives. This is not surprising given their climate change
proles are cautious or disengaged. There is also a long history in the United
States of doubt being manufactured about scientic issues through a two-sides
framing of an issue (e.g., ozone layer depletion, adverse effects of DDT, acid
rain, etc.) in ways that end up legitimating extreme minority views in terms of the
science (Oreskes & Conway, 2010).
Follow-up Activity: Reckoning with Conicting Claims and Evidence
After the class activity, we returned a week later to follow up with the two classes
of pre-service teachers, because we were struck by the number of them who
deemed both the NIPCC and IPCC as reliable. We began the class session by
presenting two opposing claims about human-caused climate change, one from
the NIPCC source and one from the IPCC source:
A. “97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree that
climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to
human activities.”
From NASA website: https://climate.nasa.gov/scientic-consensus/
B. “NIPCC’s conclusion, drawn from its extensive review of the sci-
entic evidence, is that any human global climate impact is within
the background variability of the natural climate system and is not
dangerous.”
https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/why-
scientists-disagree-about-global-warming
After reading the claims, the students were asked to answer four questions:
(1) It is possible for statements A and B to both be true at the same time (Yes or
No). Explain.
(2) What is a fact? What do you want your students to know about facts?
(3) What is bias? What do you want your students to know about bias?
(4) It is always essential to have at least two sides of a topic or issue presented
with each deemed to be legitimate (Yes or No). Explain.
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Digital Literacies and Climate Change 103
Taking a look at how Megan and Luke responded to these questions helps us
further situate and explore their understandings of reliability with a more direct
emphasis on truths, facts, and bias. Not surprisingly, both Megan and Luke
answered “yes” to the rst question. Megan wrote:
Yes, because A says it’s due to human activities and B says it could be human impact just that
the human impact will be caused by something else as well. “A” doesn’t state if it is or isn’t
effected by something else.
Although B claims climate change, if it is happening, is the result of natural
changes in the environment, Megan contended that the second claim allows for
human impact to be a potential cause of climate change. Luke supported his
“yes” response by writing, “Both statements aren’t taking hard stances with an
absolute opinion therefore there is room for personal interpretation that could
make either statement true.” Both of these responses reect a denialist perspec-
tive. Megan’s response followed the pattern of her earlier comments when she
stated that both sides of the argument can be correct. It remains unclear exactly
what Luke meant by “absolute opinions.” It might be attributed to his read-
ing that not 100% of climate change scientists agree and the use of qualifying
language of “extremely likely” in the statement. The second statement from the
NIPCC site, however, does not equivocate with its language that “any human
global impact” is natural.
To the second question, Megan responded, “Facts are truth based and col-
lected from a random sample and variety of samples of data.” Luke wrote:
A fact is something that cannot be proven wrong. A fact is concrete evidence. I want my stu-
dents to know that just because they use “facts” they could still be wrong.
While it is unclear how Megan viewed facts about the two competing
(NIPCC and IPCC), with Luke there is a move to emphasize the usefulness
of facts, how facts are put into practice to seemingly support an argument or
point of view.
When responding to the third and fourth questions, Megan wrote, “A bias is
an opinion based on one’s own thoughts” and she noted that it was always essen-
tial to have at least two sides of a topic or issue presented “because then there
is no biases given. Students can choose which side they agree most with.” Luke
dened bias as “when a person or thing uses their own personal beliefs when car-
rying out an activity” and added, “I want my students to be aware bias is very
common.” Luke, however, did not think it was necessary to have at least two sides
represented. He wrote, “while it is very nice to have both sides’ perspectives, it is
not essential and does not immediately discredit the source.”
Megan and Luke’s responses provide some additional insight into the ways
they thought about truths, facts, and bias. Their responses also suggest a need for
additional questions to better understand their sense-making, such as: do they
see a difference between a topic and issue? Are there any topics or issues that do
not merit having different or opposing sides represented? If so, what are these and
how are they different than the topic of climate change?
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104 JAMES S. DAMICO ET AL.
DIGITAL LITERACY CHALLENGES
AND IMPLICATIONS
Across the three years of our study, our student participants have continually
pushed us to examine fundamental questions about assessing the reliability of
online sources about climate change; Megan and Luke’s efforts help to further
clarify challenges with this work. Consider the CSM source. Published on a
well-respected popular news site, this news story includes a traditional journal-
istic heading that indicates the author and her afliation with the Associated
Press. In our larger study of 112 participants, many have identied this source
as an opinion-editorial (op-ed) or a blog (Megan considered it a blog), which
we have tended to view as misreadings of the source. It is not an op-ed or blog;
it is a conventional news report about a prominent climate change denier who
changed his views based on his own research. We now view our interpretation
as perhaps too facile. This news story is about an op-ed that appeared in the
New York Times, making this a news story about another piece of online media
available through a hyperlink. Moreover, this particular CSM article does have
much in common with blogs and opinion pieces. It is about a divisive topic and
its title might be construed as click-bait. These are conventional markers of
blog sites such as the now defunct left-leaning Gawker.com or the right-leaning
Breitbart.com.
The implications for teachers include how we might best support students
with this sort of online text. Megan pointed out that “chains of information”
so prevalent in online sources make determining reliability very difcult. With
journalistic sources, such as the CSM, there are concrete indicators of the trajec-
tory of the information: the AP News header, name of the author, hyperlinks to
outside content. We must guide students to not only be wary of online sources
that cover divisive or political topics but also look for news sources that have
some stable indicators of reliability. The Christian Science Monitor, New York
Times, Washington Post, and other news sources can be pointed to for their robust
reporting and history of high-quality and trusted news journalism.
Yet the most pressing digital literacy challenge that Megan and Luke highlight
is the perspective or stance that it is acceptable, if not preferable, to deem two
sources (the NIPCC and IPCC) with conicting claims and facts as each reli-
able. There are some things we can do as teachers to guide students to carefully
assess bias and identify sources that foment denial. In our larger study of 112
pre-service teachers, we have seen how critical questioning of the facts, bias, and
claims a source makes can help pre-service teachers move toward embracing the
scientic consensus on climate change. For example, student ratings of Somewhat
or Highly Reliable fell for the NIPCC source from 80% (n = 89) to 54% (n = 60)
as they moved from just evaluating a screenshot of each source to using the online
analysis tool, Critical Web Reader, to traverse and evaluate the source a second
time. Additionally, 40% (n = 45) of all the students found the NIPCC source even
less reliable following whole group deliberation.
In the eld of climate change communication, researchers have identied
how characteristics or techniques of denial work (Washington & Cook,
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Digital Literacies and Climate Change 105
2011). This has resulted in the acronym FLICC as a framework to name ve
core denialist practices: (1) Fake Experts; (2) Logical Fallacies; (3) Impossible
Expectations; (4) Cherry Picking; and (5) Conspiracy Theories (Cook & Jacobs,
2017). Teachers can guide students to use this acronym to decipher the ways
climate change denial sources attempt to convince readers or viewers of their
argument. Is the source backed by scientists but not climate change research
scientists (fake experts)? Does the source dismiss climate change scientic nd-
ings because not 100% of scientists agree (impossible expectations)? Or, does a
source claim, like President Trump, that climate change is a hoax perpetrated
by the Chinese government (conspiracy theory)? The FLICC framework can
be embedded in the instructional model outlined in this chapter in ways that
help account for diverse perspectives, make thinking visible, traverse the same
sources multiple times, and deliberate to discern sources that promote denialist
perspectives.
CONCLUSION
In 2005, late night show satirist and comedian, Stephen Colbert, is credited with
the neologism “truthiness,” which is dened by the Oxford Dictionary as “the
quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.” The term
was an attempt to capture then-President George W. Bush’s explanation of his
decision-making, which he often stated came from his “gut.” The 2016 US presi-
dential campaign, culminating in the election of Donald Trump, witnessed the
continued climb of this term in the public consciousness, which seemed to reach
its apex when The Oxford Dictionary declared “post-truth” Word of the Year in
2016, which means situations when appeals to personal beliefs or emotions are
more important than objective facts. There is perhaps no more pressing exam-
ple of how we are living in a post-truth society than with climate change. The
run-up to and aftereffects of the 2016 presidential election in the US intensied
the politicization of climate change as Donald Trump reected the doubtful or
dismissive position of many Republican lawmakers in the US Congress by calling
climate change science “a hoax.” Since taking ofce in January 2017, Trump also
proposed a budget with severe cuts to climate change-related programs and the
appointment of Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier, to head the Environmental
Protection Agency.
This chapter has explored the evaluation of complex web sources about cli-
mate change as a core set of digital literacy practices. Pre-service teachers need
opportunities to consider their own thinking about climate change and come to
better understand how online texts work and about how and why mechanisms of
denial work. There is no easy approach or solution to this challenge. The instruc-
tional model highlighted in this chapter, Digital Source Evaluation and Discussion,
coupled with a framework like FLICC can provide key support for students, espe-
cially those more likely to embrace denial perspectives in web sources. Yet, as
the work of Megan and Luke highlight, there is a need for sustained curricular
and instructional attention to address this challenge. We believe that if teacher
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106 JAMES S. DAMICO ET AL.
educators want to best prepare teachers in our “partisan age” (Kahne & Bowyer,
2017), who, in turn, will guide children and youth in their charge, grappling
directly with web sources about pressing, signicant topics like climate change
and climate change denial are essential.
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