Voters are being besieged with questionable information online about elections. How do we teach people, young and old, to parse falsehood from fact and make the educated judgments democracy demands?

Sam Wineburg, co-author of VERIFIED: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Wise Decisions about What to Believe Online, will discuss strategies he and his co-author Mike Caulfield have developed to ascertain the reliability of the latest stories circulating over the internet. In a discussion with Stanford Vice Provost for Digital Education Matthew Rascoff, he will lay out some practical, accessible steps everyone should take to assess the reliability of online information before they engage with it or amplify it. Digital literacy, Wineburg says, is essential for the civic health of a public that is increasingly online — not just to bank, shop, and find entertainment, but to socialize, discuss, become informed, and vote.

Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education, Emeritus, at Stanford University, and the founder of the nonprofit Digital Inquiry Group (previously known as Stanford History Education Group). This event is part of the Academic Innovation for the Public Good conversation series, co-organized by Stanford Digital Education and Trinity College.