Ahead of the e-Curve in Fact Checking and Verification Education: The University of Hong Kong’s Cyber News Verification Lab Leads Verification Education in Asia

Abstract

The University of Hong Kong’s (HKU) ‘Cyber News Verification Lab’ was founded in June 2016, as a focused, experiential project developing undergraduates’ online verification skills. It has been hailed as ‘ahead of the curve’ in online and social media fact-checking education by the industry’s pioneering social media open source technologists and verification experts. In September 2016, Meedan (a founding partner of First Draft News including Google News Labs) joined the experiment by providing access and technical support to their open source verification platform called ‘Check’. The project led to a significant increase in the quality of verification techniques and critical thinking actions by students. This article discusses the curriculum design and initial findings from the Cyber News Verification Lab implemented into news literacy courses at HKU in Semester 2, 2016–2017. The article also outlines current developments towards a news literacy verification rating scale—that arose from measures created by the instructor to assess student outcomes from the experiential project.