FHSU Experts Discuss Critical Thinking as Defense Against Misinformation

#

Experts Tackle Digital Misinformation at Fort Hays State University Panel

Amid growing concerns about the blurring line between fact and fiction in the digital age, Fort Hays State University hosted a panel discussion Thursday focused on helping the public navigate online media manipulation and misinformation.

The event, part of the Hays Public Library’s How-To Series, brought together five experts from journalism, academia, and library sciences to address a fundamental question in today’s information landscape: How do we determine what’s real and what’s not?

“It’s a 50/50 coin toss whether we can really identify whether something is fake or real,” said Andy Tincknell, FHSU learning commons coordinator, citing research from the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery. “It’s getting tough, and it’s going to get tougher.”

Tincknell highlighted a troubling technological gap, noting that tools designed to detect false information are struggling to keep pace with rapidly advancing technology that creates increasingly convincing misinformation.

Robyn Hartman, FHSU information literacy librarian, emphasized the importance of slowing down when consuming online content and recommended the SIFT method—Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, and Trace the context—as a practical approach to verification.

The panel extended this advice to visual media, suggesting Google’s reverse image search as an effective tool to trace the origins of photos and videos that may have been manipulated or taken out of context.

Communication studies instructor Brittney Reed introduced the concept of “consensual validation” to the discussion, encouraging people to cross-reference information across multiple sources.

“If you’re just seeing it from one source, I will often tell my students to take that with a grain of salt,” Reed explained. “You want to find several sources that are saying the same thing, particularly when it’s information that seems too crazy to be true.”

When an audience member questioned whether average people would invest time in such verification processes, journalist Lynn Ann Huntington offered a straightforward response: “It depends on how badly they want to know the truth.”

Huntington contrasted traditional media’s editorial oversight with the current digital environment, where users are increasingly responsible for their own content verification. She noted that professional editors once served as “gatekeepers” who filtered out questionable stories, but online platforms have largely eliminated this layer of oversight.

The artificial intelligence revolution received particular attention during the discussion. Panelists warned about over-reliance on AI for research, revealing that these systems often generate convincing but entirely fabricated citations and sources.

Hartman shared experiences from her work with students who have been led astray by AI-generated research. “I ask, ‘Where did you get the title of this?’ and they eventually confess that they used AI for sources they could use,” she explained. “It’s close, maybe the author has written on that topic, but then AI says, ‘Here’s a book that they wrote,’ and that author has not written that book.”

Despite these concerns, the panel acknowledged AI’s potential benefits when used appropriately—particularly as a brainstorming tool rather than a definitive information source.

Jeremy Gill, Hays Public Library Kansas Room Coordinator, joined the other panelists in providing practical advice for navigating today’s complex information environment.

Reed concluded the discussion by addressing what she sees as a critical missing element in digital communication: accountability. She noted the phenomenon of “online disinhibition,” where users feel disconnected from the consequences of sharing false information.

“We get this online disinhibition where we don’t have to face the consequences of posting something that was incorrect,” Reed said. “That’s a message we need to share with each other to try to shift the culture a little bit.”

As technology continues to advance and the information landscape grows increasingly complex, events like this panel provide crucial guidance for communities wrestling with the challenges of digital literacy and critical thinking in an age of unprecedented information abundance.