The rise of misinformation and disinformation is worrisome. This toolkit is designed to give you the resources to strengthen American Spaces visitors’ critical thinking and media literacy skills. Work with your Embassy or Consulate in collaboration with local partners, U.S. government exchange alumni, and journalists.

This programming toolkit provides suggested schedules and materials for two workshops using training materials developed by the nonprofit education organization IREX.  The two workshops focus on a “Personal Media Landscape” Exercise and Fact-Checking Training.  Additional resources are provided, including resources for finding debunked stories and free tools for creating engaging content.

In this series on News Literacy developed by VOA Learning English, there are seven videos — an introduction plus six lessons.  Each video is four minutes, and each lesson comes with a transcript and key vocabulary used in the story.

The featured video for this guide is a 7+ minute PBS News Hour video that reports on how and why schools in Washington State are starting to teach media literacy in their classrooms.  This discussion guide provides key vocabulary words, a general media landscape summary, suggested discussion questions, and information for additional media literacy resources and lesson plans.

This media literacy campaign was developed as part of U.S. Department of State’s YALI (Young African Leaders Initiative) Network programs.  These programming materials would be suitable for use in American Spaces worldwide.  There are three videos, and each video is 2-3 minutes.  Transcripts are available in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.  The Event Facilitation Guide provides suggested discussion questions and group activities.

This video has been translated into Chinese, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Videos may be found here.