In the third week, we need to submit our first assignment,  that is also my first assignment in this semester. This week’s course focuses on how could we do the fact check and let me know the importance of fact checking. Firstly, The fact check in politics is very difficult, it is often not real and false, but in a fuzzy position. For my point of view, the facts in politics are more like an objective point of view. It cannot be rated as true or false. When it is reported, it brings subjective personal inclinations. However, a large number of reports and surveys say that many influential politicians will publish some false information, such as Donald Trump. He is also a businessman and an entrepreneur. I think he is good at using public opinion to achieve the purpose of affecting the public, and the information he uses is not completely true. I also learned from the article that five elements of fact checking which are “choosing claims to check, contacting the speaker, tracing false claims, dealing with experts, and showing your work.”  What makes me most interested and insightful is tracing false claims.  We can see some very weak information in the article, and then find some relevant information to find out if they can be confirmed. The fact check is a rigorous series of processes, and understanding this aspect is also very helpful for my next study.

Reference 

Lucas G, Anatomy of a Fact Check: Objective Practice and the Contested Epistemology of Fact Checking, Communication, Culture & Critique ISSN 1753-9129,.

During the second week, I started to understand something about fake news from reading “defining fake news”. Some people will be over-excited by fake news because they will think that the information is true and lose their judgment. For me, fake news may be mostly like fictional information from perhaps the government wants to lead public opinion, or maybe some people aim to influence the public, and some for personal benefit and profit. In addition, because of the development of technology, fake news has more channels to spread, such as social media, a few words spoken by authoritative on Twitter will also become a news. Through data display, Facebook has a large uses, many people use it to know some information, but few people think about the authenticity of those information. At the same time, I also get idea “identified six ways that previous studies have operationalized fake news: satire, parody, fabrica- tion, manipulation, propaganda, and advertising.” The form of fake news is varied and some are difficult to distinguish because it is very similar to real news, so as an audience, we need to think and discern carefully. On the TV studio class, we have grouped this week,The core of our group is graphics. This is not easily job for me, 

But I also think this is a good opportunity to learn things. So I will try my best to do that. 

Reference

Edson C. Tandoc Jr., Zheng Wei Lim & Richard Ling (2018) Defining “Fake News”, Digital Journalism, 6:2, 137-153, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143.

Before undertaking this cred, in my daily life, I often see some news on Twitter, Facebook or XinLang Weibo. I judge whether they are fake news or real news based on my past life experience. But sometimes I am often misled when a lot of information put together. For example, when one thing is reported by many media, I think it is likely to be true. Actually, this is also a form that fake news often appears, because the news is easily controlled in nowadays. Most of the methods and experiences I use to judge information come from the teachers of the school and my parents and friends around me. I didn’t have chance to get to know the professional of judging information, so I found this course very useful for me. Because I think it is vital to have critical thinking. We can’t simply accept a message without thinking. This course helps me to accept a series of rigorous and accurate judgment standards. I think it is very beneficial for my future career. After undertake the RMIT Fact Check Credential, I acknowledged some theory. For instance, what is fact and what is opinion or what is primary resource. In addition, I get some useful websites about fact check. Although I failed this text, I still learn a lot from that. It provides a more professional way to demonstrate the authenticity of a news. It also teaches me how to distinguish fake photos and videos. I think that authenticity is the most important part of news. Whether it is big news or small news, it is necessary to report the real information, and the audience must have the ability to criticize information.

Reflective blog posts (1)

Our group research

RMIT Fact Check Credential Reflection

Reflective blog (2)

Reflective blog 3

Our group decide choose loss of species for our topic. When we see those questions, we are thinking about what is our interests. We are considering “gender” at the first time because of our group numbers three-quarter are female. However, after discussion, we think animals protection is very significant topic in Australia, therefore we also have some curiosity on that, this issue may be more suitable for us to dialectical and thinking. Throughout the reading “Does Australia have one of the ‘highest loss of species anywhere in the world’?”, I find out Australia has a large number of species, and even a large proportion of the world’s global share. There are also many animals and plants that only survive in Australia (RMIT ABC Fact check, 2015). In fact, after investigation, many animals have been extinct, for example, the Tasmanian tiger was extinct in 1930. The Australia government also use that Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act list to record which species have been extinct. At the same time, from Woinarski and Andrew A. Burbidge and Peter L. Harrison, it is also provide data 11 percent of the nearly 300 Australian terrestrial mammal species have become extinct (2015, p4534). The article also describes the list of animal extinctions in various countries (red list), and the number of extinct animals in Australia is fifth. In reading, analyzing and comparing similar articles, I think the correctness of this news is very high, because it uses a lot of data, articles, pictures, and people’s observations to prove this point, which will make the news’ credibility is increasing, so our team will prove and acknowledge this issue from all aspects.

Reference 

John C.Z. Woinarski, Andrew A. Burbidge and Peter L. Harrison, Ongoing unravelling of a continental fauna, PNAS, April 2015. 

RMIT ABC Fact check, 2015, “Fact check: Does Australia have one of the ‘highest loss of species anywhere in the world’?”, viewed in 22 March 2019, “https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-19/fact-check-does-australia-have-one-of-the-highest-extinction/6691026“.

In the first week studio, I start to get to know what this course is talk about. Actually, fake news and fact checking is not a familiar

topic for me, at the beginning, I thought is watch news and find out that is true or fake or something like finding the truth.

However, during the first week class, I finger out it is not that simple. We need to know what is fake news and how could we check

is ‘real’ or ‘fake’ news is very important. In addition, I also get some idea from first week reading “Fact-Checking: The New

Workplace Skill”. The article tells that many people nowadays will be misled by the media and news. Because people can easily

accept the information released by authority. And this course also hopes to teach us to have speculative thinking, to demonstrate

and think about the authenticity of a message and make our judgment (sushi, 2018). At the end of the first week, we also came

into know the TV studio. This is a very precious experience for me, because I have not been exposed to the shooting and use of

such equipment before. Teachers teach us how can we carefully use those equipment and some processes about shooting,

directing senses. I also sat in the camera and felt that I was photographed. These are very interesting experiences. After finishing

this week’s course, I felt that a large part of it was not what I imagined, but it was better than I thought. I think that after this

semester , I can learn a lot of valuable knowledge, especially for the recognition and cognition of news, this makes me full of

expectations for this course.

Reference

Sushi, D, 2018, “Fact checking: The new workplace skill”, viewed 15 March 2019, <<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-13/fact-checking-the-new-workplace-skill/10207832?fbclid=IwAR1XpTE_HzpqDnyEkySE72cl-D66xcCk8LkISfzq_GYZvMAl5m9r3ITKgD8>>