Key Terms
What is media?
Communication channels, tools, and organizations used to store, deliver, and share information or entertainment with the public.
What does the "S" in SEEK stand for?
Scope
When using lateral reading, should you stay on the original website or leave it?
Leave it and investigate the claim elsewhere.
Question: What is the main purpose of critical ignoring?
Answer: To decide what information deserves your attention based on whether it is reliable and useful.
Question: You hear the same false claim every day. Eventually, you start believing it simply because you have heard it so many times. What bias is this?
Answer: Illusory truth.
What is a cognitive bias?
A systematic error in the way we think that affects how we process and understand information.
What does the "E" in SEEK stand for?
There are two E's.
Explore and Evaluate.
You see a surprising claim online. What should you do when you feel a strong emotional reaction?
Slow down and recognize that the emotional reaction may be a signal to investigate the claim.
Question: What is information avoidance?
Answer: Avoiding something online because you are trying to protect yourself from potential harm.
Question: What is confirmation bias?
Answer: The tendency to search for, favor, and remember information that confirms what we already believe.
What is lateral reading?
Leaving the original source and checking what other sources say about the claim and who made it.
During which SEEK stage do you gather information from a range of sources without judging too quickly?
Explore
When you leave the original source, name two things you should investigate.
The claim itself and who created/made the claim.
Question: What is the main difference between information avoidance and critical ignoring?
Answer: Information avoidance protects you from potentially harmful or upsetting content, while critical ignoring is about deciding whether information is reliable and useful.
Question: Emma believes that social media is harmful. She only searches for articles that say social media is harmful and ignores articles that disagree. What bias is she showing?
Answer: Confirmation bias.
What is critical ignoring?
Purposefully choosing what information to pay attention to and what to ignore based on its reliability and usefulness.
During which stage do you compare your sources and look for where they agree, disagree, or have missing information?
Evaluate.
You find three other sources about the same claim. Two support it and one disagrees. What should you do?
Answer: Compare the sources and assess whether the evidence supports the original claim.
Question: You see a video that is clearly designed to make you angry so that you will comment and share it. What media-literacy skill could help you decide whether it deserves your attention?
Answer: Critical ignoring.
Question: You see an extremely vivid video of a shark attack. You decide that shark attacks must be very common because you can easily picture one happening. What bias might affect your thinking?
Answer: Availability bias.
What is engagement bait, and what is its purpose?
Content designed to capture attention or make people react automatically using emotional hooks, curiosity gaps, or audiovisual tricks
You researched a question and discovered that your research created several new questions. Which SEEK stage tells you to think about what you still need to investigate?
Keep Questioning
Question: Why is lateral reading more useful than simply reading a website very carefully?
Answer: Because you need to see what other sources say about the claim and its creator rather than relying only on the original source.
Question: A student says, "I ignore everything online that I don't agree with." Is this a good example of critical ignoring? Explain why or why not.
Answer: No. Critical ignoring is based on reliability and usefulness, not simply whether you agree with something.
Question: Explain why the Great Moon Hoax was especially effective because of cognitive biases.
Answer: The repeated claims could create an illusory truth effect, while people could also favor information that confirmed what they already believed and judge information based on vivid or memorable examples.