Hoax sites

From Library Instruction Wiki

Hoax sites, or imaginative and spoof sites, are useful for promoting critical thinking about the truthfulness of information found on the Internet, and are often used in teaching segments on evaluating sources, particularly Website Evaluation.

Though not exactly deliberate hoaxes, the satirical online newspaper The Onion (http://www.theonion.com/) and the white supremacist creation martinlutherking.org (http://www.martinlutherking.org/) are frequently mentioned as being useful for this purpose. Other shock sites or provocative pages (such as a pro-anorexia (http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Health/Body_Image/Pro-Anorexia/) community) may also be useful to show to mature audiences.

Of course, care should be taken to also emphasize the growing amount of scholarly research available online as well -- some available via library subscriptions, and others in open access publications and community-built repositories such as Wikis -- and also not to stereotype younger library users with statements such as, "kids will believe anything they read online."

External Links

• Open Directory Project listings (http://dmoz.org/Reference/Education/Instructional_Technology/Evaluation/Web_Site_Evaluation/Hoax_Sites/) A large, updated directory of hoax sites