Discussion: Imagine there is no journalism in the world

Objective:

At the end of discussion, learners will be able to:

• Realise the ‘dystopian’ society they are asked to imagine seems a lot like the real world, especially on the internet. 
• Understand why verification is important and why we need news organisations and journalists.

Steps:

• Ask students to imagine a world where there is no news organization or professional journalist. There is news-like information everywhere from the government, companies, entertainment media industry, and so forth, but in that world, nobody is making a living by checking facts or curating verified information.
• Have them discuss in small groups what that world would look like. 
• Ask each group to make a list of five things that would make such a society distinctively different from ours (5-7 min) 
• Make sure that each group’s list can be easily shared with other groups using tools such as Padlet, Google Doc, or a few whiteboards in class.
• Have students go through the lists by other groups (5 min)
• Class discussion (8-10 min)

Teacher’s note

• Most students would end up describing a situation really close to the real world, in our experience — proliferation of rumours, gossip, misinformation; difficulties of telling facts from fiction; authorities manipulating public conversations; pervasive propaganda messages, trolls producing toxic, harmful content; and so forth.
• This activity aims to have students think about today’s media landscape. In class discussion, point out that although it may not be easy to define what ‘journalism’ is or who should be considered ‘journalists’, our society needs them to function.

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