Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: Trustometer

20 minutes

Find Out: Paid persuasion

25 minutes

Take Action: Fact check

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions

Students will:

understand how language in media and politics influences public trust
develop skills to evaluate and debunk misinformation using reliable tools and resources critically.

Success criteria

Students can:

identify how language impacts trust in media and political communications
research and write an article that accurately describes a debunked claim using credible resources and evidence.

Tune In: Trustometer

Preparation

Draw a 5-point scale on the whiteboard and label one end ‘Not Trustworthy’ and the other end ‘Extremely Trustworthy.’

Step 1

Provide each student with 2 different coloured sticky notes. Ask students to write ‘politicians’ on one sticky note and ‘media’ on the other.

Step 2

Explain to students that their task is to place each sticky note on the scale based on how trustworthy they believe politicians versus the media are when receiving information about clean energy.

Invite students to approach the whiteboard to place each sticky note based on their opinion of trustworthiness. Next, ask some student volunteers to share why they placed their sticky notes in that position.

Step 3

Ask students to compare the differences in their responses to the level of trust they hold in politicians and the media. You may like to prompt students by asking:

Based on the scale, does the class trust the media or politicians more about clean energy information?

Find Out: Paid persuasion

Step 1

As a class, explore the Meta Ad Library (Facebook.com: Meta Ad Library) on a digital display or projector.

Explain to students that the Meta Ad Library is a public database that shows ads running across Facebook and Instagram. It helps people see who is paying for ads, what messages they promote, and how they target audiences. This tool is useful for understanding political advertising, media influence, and the spread of information online.

When using the Meta Ad Library, ensure that you are looking for advertisements in Australia.

Step 2

Model to students how to explore the website. Demonstrate how to select an option from the drop-down menu, such as ‘issues, elections, or politics.’ Write a keyword in the search box, such as ‘energy,’ and examine the results of paid advertisements about energy in Australia with students.

As you examine the results, point out key features such as:

date of advertisement
the politician, political party, organisation or individual that paid for the advertisement
estimated audience size
amount spent on the advertisement
platforms the advertisement is available on (such as Instagram and Facebook)
assess if the advertisement has multiple versions (more than 1 advertisement of a similar nature)

Step 3

While looking at selected advertisements, examine persuasive devices in the language and any imagery or video accompanying the advert. Explore the structure of the argument, unpacking how it works to persuade the audience of a position.

Explore the words and images, looking for:

Persuasive language and phrases, including (but not limited to) emotive language, emphatic statements, exaggeration, repetition, rhetorical questions, undercutting and rebuttals.
Persuasive images include juxtaposition, comparison, contrast, emotive imagery, dramatic images, implied meaning, undercutting images, and other image and video devices such as shot angle and sound design.

Step 4

Select an advertisement to explore further, such as one by the Australian Energy Producers (see example below). By modelling this, you can demonstrate to students what to look for before they attempt this independently.

For example:

Guiding prompts	Example
What is the issue or topic of the advertisement?	energy
Who paid for the advertisement?	paid for advertisement from the Australian Energy Producers
What can you find online about the advertiser?	The Australian Energy Producers are a group of approximately 200 members, comprising oil and gas explorers and producers active in Australia, alongside companies providing such goods and services that produce approximately 95% of Australia’s oil and gas.
What are the claims, evidence and motives behind the advertisement?	This advertisement contains a video claiming that fossil fuels (such as gas) can ‘back up renewables,’ suggesting that renewable energy cannot provide enough electricity for Australian consumption. The advertiser is a group invested in fossil fuels, and they have a financial motive to ensure that fossil fuels remain in production, as they are vulnerable to losing many factors if Australia converts to renewable energy sources.
What persuasive devices have been used in the advertisement?	This advertisement portrays clean energy options in a negative light. The evidence used in the ad doesn’t reference statistics, yet it appeals to a sense of patriotism by using phrases such as ‘helps keep the country running.’ This advertisement also includes a video that shows a solar panel in the rain followed by a woman in a house experiencing a power cut. The video deliberately implies through the juxtaposition of images that solar power goes out when it rains (emotive imagery, compare and contrast, implied meaning, sound design & emotion through an ominous rumble of thunder).

Learning support: Provide students with a copy of the example during their independent research.

Step 5

Students work in pairs to find an advertisement on the Meta Ad Library and respond to the questions on the Student Worksheet. Once completed, pairs volunteer to present what they found briefly to the whole class if time permits.

Take Action: Fact check

Step 1

As a class, visit the RMIT Information Integrity Hub fact check archive (rmit.edu.au: Fact check archive). Explain to students that between 2022 and 2024, RMIT University ran a fact-checking unit dedicated to fighting misinformation and disinformation on social media. During this time, the Hub published more than 130 articles that investigate and then provide a verdict on a claim.

Step 2

Your students’ task is to choose 1 of the articles from the archive to read and make notes about the claim, process and verdict of the claim. Students will prepare a short overview of the issue, the claim, the process and the verdict on the Student Worksheet.

Reflection

On the Student Worksheet, students reflect on their learning by responding to a reflection question:

Based on your learning, how do persuasive devices relating to language choice and imagery shape your perception of trust in media and political communications?

Building Trust Through Media Content

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