Global Media and Information Literacy Week Begins: Teaching Students to Verify a Story

Can a video with thousands of likes serve as a factual basis for a classroom discussion? Media literacy education requires more than helping students express an opinion. They also need to explain why they believe a claim, and how to reserve judgment when the evidence is insufficient.

Running from 24 to 31 October, UNESCO’s Global Media and Information Literacy Week centres on the theme “We All Play a Part”. This year’s decentralised, participatory programme connects regional and thematic events organised by UNESCO offices and partners. Participants include educators, journalists, young people, digital content creators, parents and regulators.

That brings people who distribute information outside school into the educational discussion. Students may learn verification in class, then return to a stream of friends’ posts, creators’ commentary and recommended content. Whether checking becomes a lasting habit depends both on how students read and on how others publish.

Likes cannot replace evidence

UNESCO’s Behind the Screens survey, published in 2024, provides a concrete backdrop. Among 500 digital content creators surveyed across 45 countries, 62% said they did not carry out rigorous, systematic fact-checking before sharing information. About 42% relied primarily on popularity measures such as likes and shares when assessing credibility, while 73% wanted relevant training.

Those figures describe the creators surveyed at the time. They do not measure the behaviour of all teachers, students or internet users in 2026. They do, however, identify a teaching difficulty: rapid browsing can blur the distinction between popularity and evidential support.

A widely shared story has demonstrated its reach. Establishing whether its claims are sound still requires original material, scrutiny of the evidence and a check that apparently separate reports actually draw on independent sources. Several accounts repeating the same document do not amount to several independent confirmations.

In a classroom, this shifts the question from “Do you think it is true?” to “What supports your judgment?” Students can compare a headline, the article and the underlying document, distinguishing established facts from conjecture. Assessment then concerns the clarity of their verification process rather than whether their opinions match.

A genuine image can carry a false time or place

Verification extends beyond detecting fabricated material. Teaching resources from France’s Centre for Media and Information Literacy, CLEMI, ask students to trace images to their source, check the dates of capture and publication, identify the place and author, and examine whether the caption fits the image and its context.

This is particularly relevant when an old image circulates with a new caption. The picture may be genuine, yet leave readers with a false impression if presented as a different event, place or date. Asking only whether an image has been altered does not complete the check.

A single image can support a full classroom exercise: record the current post’s claim, look for earlier publications, compare captions and verifiable location details, then list what remains uncertain. The value lies in making the route to a conclusion visible, rather than memorising a true-or-false label.

Content made with generative AI also requires a return to evidence. Fluent language and convincing imagery cannot establish the reliability of names, dates or events. Alongside discussion of how tools are used, students need to explain where their material came from and which claims they checked.

Who takes responsibility beyond school?

This year’s inclusion of parents, creators and public institutions also underlines the limits of a one-off classroom lesson. Students need repeated practice, while publishers need to supply traceable sources. When an error is corrected, the correction needs a route back to the original audience.

Teachers can make room for an explicit “not yet known”. If the original document cannot be located or an image’s date remains uncertain, withholding a repost and recording the outstanding questions is a responsible response. Demanding an immediate answer to every claim can instead reward unsupported certainty.

The official programme schedules an African thematic event in Abuja, Nigeria, on 28–29 October, followed on 29 October by a Latin American event addressing regulators and media and information literacy. Each region will approach practical work through its own information environment. For schools, a workable starting point remains specific: students bring a claim into class and leave with a verification process they can explain.

Sources: UNESCO’s 2026 Global Media and Information Literacy Week programme and 2024 Behind the Screens survey; CLEMI teaching resources.