Trust Me Documentary

This evening I attended “most” of the March 2024 meeting of “TIP Teachers,” which is “Teachers for an Informed Public.” I’ve been a participant of TIP Teachers for over a year now, although I’m in North Carolina and the majority of the educators involved in TIP are in the State of Washington. Last summer in June I participated in the unique “Teaching for Resilience: FinnishED Workshop” hosted by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, and wrote the blog post, “Media Literacy Lesson from Finland” to summarize and share my learning from that fantastic experience. This Friday on March 8th, I’ll be sharing about that experience in a poster session at our 2024 NCTIES Conference in Raleigh, NC. In this post, I will share some of the resources I learned about at tonight’s TIP Teachers Zoom meeting.

The main resource I’m excited about from tonight’s meeting is the 2020 documentary, “Trust Me.” It reminds me a lot of the documentary “The Social Dilemma,” which was also released in 2020. Here’s the trailer for “Trust Me.”

In 1 of our Zoom breakout rooms tonight, we looked at some of the video clips and suggested questions / classroom activities in the “Trust Me” documentary Classroom Guide for Grades 4-12. The activities are described as, “A unit on manipulation and misinformation.” That classroom guide includes a direct link to 15 “Educational Segments,” which are combined into a single 1 hour and 33 minute long video on Vimeo.

Some of those same clips are available as public videos (not “unlisted”) on the “Trust Me” Documentary’s official Vimeo channel. 34 videos are included as of today. 1 of the examples we watched tonight was 2 minute and 44 second clip, “Citizens Misled by Disinformation on the Internet,” which (among other things) dramatically introduces the facts surrounding the “PizzaGate” conspiracy theory, including when “Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, arrived at Comet Ping Pong and fired three shots from an AR-15 style rifle that struck the restaurant’s walls, a desk, and a door.”

As a middle school media literacy teacher, I’ve been teaching students about the SIFT web literacy framework, lateral reading, and how to avoid “Froot Loop Conspiracy Theories” (wild, outlandish theories) for the past 4 years using the Apollo Moon landings and allegations by conspiracy theorists that the landings were hoaxes. I don’t teach my middle schoolers about Pizza Gate.

However, I’m now eager to watch the entire “Trust Me” documentary and see what elements of it could be integrated into my media literacy lessons. I’m just finishing up a 6 week micro-credential course for adult educators on “Teaching the Conspiracies” for the 2024 MediaEd Institute, and I definitely think some of the clips here would be great to use in our week focusing on “Contemporary Conspiracy Theories” when I teach this class again.

One of the ways teachers can stream the “Trust Me” documentary for students is to use Kanopy. That is also addressed in the educator guide, and I hadn’t heard of that streaming platform previously.

The Code.org lesson on “Societal Impact of Generative AI” was highlighted in another TIP Zoom breakout room tonight, but I was not able to attend all of that presentation. This is another resource I’m interested in exploring further.

The last resource which was mentioned, and I’ve heard about but not yet explored, is the “Minecraft Digital Citizenship Kit.” My students are using Minecraft Education and these lessons would likely be a great way to explore some of our media and digital literacy course themes through Minecraft. I just need to make some time to explore these lessons personally!

The last thing I’ll note is that the EXPERTS section of the “Trust Me” documentary website is worth exploring. They include:

Jimmeka Anderson, Founder & Executive Director – I AM not the MEdia, Inc.
Sam Wineburg, Professor of Education, Stanford University
Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, Executive Director – National Association for Media Literacy Education
Sherri Hope Culver, Associate Professor, Temple University. Director – Center for Media and Information Literacy

Since finally leaving Twitter in November 2023 I’ve been investing (time-wise) heavily in Mastodon, Threads and Blue Sky, and building lists of media literacy experts (and others) on those platforms. I’m eager to learn more about these media literacy advocates and their organizations, and hopefully follow each one on social media.

One serendipitous discovery which followed tonight’s TIP Meeting and drafting this blog post was discovering:

Jimmeka Anderson received her Ph.D. from the Curriculum and Instruction-Urban Education program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and her Master’s degree in Educational Media with a focus on New Media Literacies at Appalachian State University.
Jimmeka anderson. (n.d.). New America. Retrieved March 4, 2024, from http://newamerica.org/our-people/jimmeka-anderson/

It turns out her organization, I AM not the MEdia, Inc., is based right here where we live in Charlotte, North Carolina! I had no idea!

Thank you TIP Teachers for another evening of great learning about media literacy and media literacy resources! If you’re also interested in these topics, I encourage you to visit www.TIPteachers.net and sign up to become part of their wonderful media literacy community!

You can also find more resources related to media literacy on my website, medialiteracy.wesfryer.com.

“Trust Me Documentary Visualization” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

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