Bias Bingo (IMS-M2-01-EN)

• To support teachers in teaching their students about potential biases that can occur in online information.

• First-liners

1. The teacher starts the activity by introducing information disorder and bias in information, and the different types of bias that can occur in texts.
2. Next, students are divided in small groups of about 2 to 5 students. The teacher gives each group of students five (short) texts containing some sort of bias. These texts can be blog posts, newspaper articles, social media posts, etc.. The bias could be related to politics, only discussing one side of the conflict, etc.
3. Each group also gets a bingo card containing different kinds of bias that can be present in information. The task is to identify these biases in the five texts they have received from the teacher. Once found, they can cross off the type of bias on the bingo card.
4. The group of students that has first achieved Bingo (one horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line completed) has won the game.

Because of the highly different (news) contexts between countries, it is hard to provide examples of information that will work for your group of students. Therefore, we advise the teacher to provide examples of biased information that align best the local context themselves.

Game

Use the COSTAID guidelines as a source of information on information disorder and biased information.

The Bingo Card handout is an example handout that can be edited to better fit your proposed examples. Edit the card in such a way that it is possible for students to achieve a bingo (one horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line completed) based on the examples they are provided, for instance by switching around the concepts on the card or adding in new concepts that better align with the contents of the examples.

Yes, please download it from here.

Institute for Media Studies