Abstract:

Taking time to ensure that students know the difference between the terms news and fake news can sometimes be empowering enough to make students pay more attention to the information they receive, reflect and question its credibility. Imagine the strictness involved in defining terms such as bias as they relate to the news, using the concrete term to spot examples in our media, and discussing how the terms play a role in our interpretation and communication of the news.

Questioning how university students currently receive news and how they validate their sources will often lead to the student's realization that oftentimes these news come from a family or various other sources with little to no credibility, such as social media, informal communication channels, random online information platforms, etc.

So how does this disturbing trend affect the education of our students? For one and probably the most obvious reason, these statistics shed light on the problem that most students are not taught media literacy in current curriculums.

By asking university students to determine factual websites versus websites that simply provide entertainment we will definitely encounter that sometimes it is difficult to differentiate between real and fake news sites.

A useful skill that students can be taught to is to check the story validating it through multiple outlets to ensure that it is credible, factual and authentic before accepting it as a fact.

The current research is an attempt in creating a conceptual model for differentiation of fake news in university information environment.

Keywords:

Fake news, education, university students, communication, social media, information platforms, educational process, useful skills and competences.