Given the flood of photorealistic AI-generated images washing over social media networks like X and Facebook these days, we're seemingly entering a new age of media skepticism: the era of what I'm calling "deep doubt." While questioning the authenticity of digital content stretches back decades—and analog media long before that—easy access to tools that generate convincing fake content has led to a new wave of liars using AI-generated scenes to deny real documentary evidence. Along the way, people's existing skepticism toward online content from strangers may be reaching new heights.
Deep doubt is skepticism of real media that stems from the existence of generative AI. This manifests as broad public skepticism toward the veracity of media artifacts, which in turn leads to a notable consequence: People can now more credibly claim that real events did not happen and suggest that documentary evidence was fabricated using AI tools.
The concept behind "deep doubt" isn't new, but its real-world impact is becoming increasingly apparent. Since the term "deepfake" first surfaced in 2017, we've seen a rapid evolution in AI-generated media capabilities. This has led to recent examples of deep doubt in action, such as conspiracy theorists claiming that President Joe Biden has been replaced by an AI-powered hologram and former President Donald Trump's baseless accusation in August that Vice President Kamala Harris used AI to fake crowd sizes at her rallies. And on Friday, Trump cried "AI" again at a photo of him with E. Jean Carroll, a writer who successfully sued him for sexual assault, that contradicts his claim of never having met her.
College students around the world have deep-seated fears, if not despair about the existential threat of climate change — fears they may have harbored since childhood. As the frequency of severe weather events increases and the Earth’s temperature inches upward, emotions have intensified for a lot of students in the United States and it turns out that many keep their concerns about living on a warming planet to themselves.
At Project Information Literacy (PIL), the nonprofit independent research institute I lead, a group of library and information science and new media researchers — including myself — conduct national research about the information seeking behavior of college students and recent graduates. As the director and a principal investigator at PIL with 25 years of experience as a professor of new media and communication theory, I'm focused on investigating what it’s like to be a student in the digital age.
Earlier this year, we surveyed nearly 1,600 undergraduate students from nine U.S. colleges and universities as part of a larger study on how people living in America encounter and respond to climate change news and information. Our survey delved into why some students are distrustful or ambivalent while others still have hope in the midst of gloom. This research was part of a yearlong study we led, examining how our sharply divergent attitudes and beliefs about climate change are shaped by news and information we encounter, curate, engage with and share.
According to our survey data, 78 percent of the students who responded indicated that climate change made them anxious about their future and 88 percent reported that they are anxious for future generations. As one respondent put it in an open response question, “This is our future, and we’re watching it be destroyed.” Another wrote: “There has been so much damage and loss of life as a result of climate change that I feel as though I’m becoming numb to it — it’s just the new normal, especially for my generation.”
Amid the anxiety, however, are notable glimmers of hope. Of our survey respondents, 90 percent agreed that humanity has the ability to mitigate climate change, 78 percent believed in the power of individual action and more than 80 percent were motivated to be part of the climate change solution.
There’s good news in findings like these for educators looking for opportunities to affect change. Even if students say they are “sad,” “worried,” “anxious” and “angry” about living on a planet in peril, many are taking individual steps to fight climate change, no matter how small they seem. Hannah Ritchie, senior researcher in the Programme for Global Development at the University of Oxford and deputy editor at “Our World in Data” refers to the growing attention to do something about climate change as “urgent optimism.” Ritchie suggests reframing how we talk about climate change and that developing a sense of optimism and hope can be steps toward collective action.
In an opinion essay published by “Scientific American,” Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, associate professor at Colby College wrote that the key to talking with students about climate change is letting them express their feelings and fears before introducing any scientific facts. That’s when discussions can happen and students can see how community climate action amplifies solutions, which can then counter despair, inform policy making and spark hope.
If faculty, librarians and administrators at colleges and universities want to bring more attention to climate change, it’s critical to understand not just what students know about the climate crisis but how they know it and how this shapes their beliefs and attitudes. How do students encounter and respond to the topic of climate change in the media, in conversations with others, and in relation to themselves?
When analyzing our survey data, we found that most student respondents curate information streams that include climate change news, but they are not consumed by it. While they followed news of all kinds, most said they had read, listened to, or heard only “some” or “a little” climate change news during the past week.
One reason for this may be the bleak tone of climate change coverage by the media. More than three-quarters of the student sample agreed with the statement, “The media focuses more on the negative impacts of climate change rather than solutions.” What appears lacking in most climate coverage from left- or right-leaning sources alike is not so much a sense of urgency, but possible solutions and adaptations offering a way forward.
An earlier PIL study about how students engage with the news involved a survey of 5,844 undergraduates at 11 American colleges, found that the college classroom is an influential incubator for discussing news and interpreting current events. In that study, seven in 10 respondents to our survey said they had learned of news about a range of topics in discussions with professors during the preceding week.
From open responses to our current survey, we learned that the college classroom is also a crucial source of information for helping students learn about climate change and what role they might play in doing something about it. As one student put it, “hearing about climate change makes me want to be part of a solution, it’s why I’m studying environmental science.”
While a majority of students say they had similar opinions about climate change as people in their orbit, including family and friends, their participation in the public square was notably limited. Only 26 percent of students said they shared ideas or links to climate change news and information through in-person conversations or on social media in the month prior to taking the survey.
This contradiction is one of the complexities that surfaced from our findings about climate change discourse: Students are motivated to be part of the solution but they’re not actively talking with like-minded people in their lives about how they could collectively take action.
Surprisingly, many of the students we surveyed say they trust the veracity of climate scientists. This kind of trust gets parlayed into making efficient decisions about truthfulness of climate information: A significant majority (82 percent) agreed scientists understand the causes of climate change, and more than half believed most news about the climate crisis was credible.
Many students also expressed that they combined their innate trust with other methods of verifying the reliability of news, like comparing one source with another for fact-checking. While growing up, many say they’ve learned about media and information literacy and have made source evaluation a habitual practice. This finding confirms the success of librarians’ research instruction with students.
Since the rising generation of college students will be the ones to live with the consequences of climate change decisions we make now, knowing their perspective is vital for addressing climate change today. Given that many feel overwhelmed by anxiety and despair, we must figure out how to transform their concerns and fears into a sense that we are not doomed and that collective action is still possible and desperately needed.
The snapshot of our survey about how college students respond to climate change tells us they have devoted considerably more attention to thinking about climate change than their counterparts in the general population have. Higher education faculty and administrators have a critical role to play in helping students gain a sense of agency as we confront a global climate challenge.
The classroom may be the best place for faculty to start. Class discussions about climate change news can help students see connections between their news practices and their academic work, while showing that familiarity with news is a social practice and a form of civic engagement. Several studies in the social sciences and sciences have shown discussions like these can build critical thinking and disciplinary knowledge.
There is still much work to be done to help students translate climate anxiety into shared action. But as one student wrote: “It’s very easy to feel hopeless about a situation you don’t directly have control over, but progress always starts from the bottom.”
How artificial intelligence can empower teachers to deliver quality education.
GUEST COLUMN | by Richard Savage, Ed.D.
SIMPLELINE
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Grammarly have taken the world by storm. ChatGPT alone is setting records with more than 1.6 billion visits per month and 180 million active users.
While technology has always driven educational transformation, the fast arrival of AI tools has created considerable debate among educators, largely due to uncertainty about their operation and path forward.
‘While technology has always driven educational transformation, the fast arrival of AI tools has created considerable debate among educators, largely due to uncertainty about their operation and path forward.’
As an online-based school, we’ve asked ourselves how AI will impact our own curriculum as an online-based learning environment and our academic integrity. Whether we’re prepared or not, students are already embracing the AI trend: roughly one-in-five teenagers who have heard of ChatGPT utilized the tool to aid them in their schoolwork, according to a 2023 Pew Research Study.
Parents Say AI Skills for Children ‘Crucial’
While the need for critical conversation around AI tools is warranted, optimism is rising. An April 2024 YouGov survey revealed that two-thirds of parents with children under 18 consider learning AI skills crucial for K-12 students’ future career prospects.
As schools nationwide face learning loss and low student engagement, coupled with overwhelmed and understaffed teaching staff, educators have opportunities to improve their classrooms through AI:
Tracking Classroom Learning and Student Outcomes. One of the key advantages of AI is its capacity to process large volumes of data. In the classroom, this can provide teachers with deeper insights into student learning and outcomes. Platforms like BrightBytes use AI to track student performance, identify areas of difficulty and design effective interventions. Consolidating and analyzing classroom data through AI can help teachers create targeted instructional plans, ultimately enabling them to focus more on teaching and less on administrative tasks.
Educators Need Proper Training
However, our educators need proper training, AI literacy, and ethical guidelines to ensure responsible usage. This includes safeguarding student privacy, maintaining human oversight in AI-based decision-making and actively addressing algorithmic biases.
Personalize Learning Experiences. If the technology is available, kids will find it and use it. When it comes to AI, that may not be a bad thing. In a 2023 study by Quizlet, 73 percent of students indicated that AI helps them to understand material better; 67 percent said it helped them to study faster and more efficiently.
In the classroom, AI-powered platforms and tools have the ability to provide students more tailored instruction and feedback that caters to their individual learning styles, preferences and pace of learning. Personalized approaches both enhance student engagement and motivation while fostering deeper understanding of material. New technologies can also play a pivotal role in aiding classroom inclusivity by offering tools that accommodate diverse learning needs. Technologies like text-to-speech, speech recognition and language translation break down barriers, allowing students with varying levels of language proficiency or learning abilities to engage with educational content.
On the teacher’s end, educators can leverage AI-powered platforms like Curipod or Eduaide.Ai to develop interactive lessons, activities and assessments for specific students or the class as a whole in topics that might be a little harder to comprehend.
Deploy AI in the Classroom To Assist with New Curriculum: Young people are prolific at using technology as it is something they have grown up with. Students have more information at the tip of their fingers than we ever thought possible. Unfortunately, there are times when the sources of news and information that students access contain misinformation.
Getting Educated
Last year, the California Assembly passed Bill 873, which mandates media literacy education in various subjects, in response to the massive spread of misinformation and need for such skills. AI-based tools can help educators teach students how to recognize trusted sources vs. misinformation. In turn, this underscores the responsible use of technology and our responsibility as global citizens.
New, Innovative AI-Themed Classes: Offer “Intro to AI” or AI-forward classes. These types of classes can help students learn about the vast, real world applications of AI beyond ChatCPT and open up a world of future possibilities for them to consider. Potential class offerings could include a coding class for AI or science which focuses on the vast applications of AI in medicine today.
Lastly, if your school is incorporating AI into the classroom or including it as part of the students’ educational experience, it is imperative that you establish a clear AI policy. Also, it is very important to explain and reiterate the policy to students as they advance grade levels.
As educators, we play a crucial role in molding the foundation for the next generation. Drawing upon our own experience in the technology revolution and leading in the next, let’s ensure every student has the opportunity to thrive.
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Dr. Richard Savage is the superintendent of California Online Public Schools, an accredited, tuition-free online public school serving students in grades TK-12 across 32 California counties. He has taught high school Spanish, coached soccer and volleyball, and served as vice principal to over 2,500 students at Antelope Valley High School. He also coordinated a Distinguished School Award, a successful six-year accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, and school-wide project-based learning implementation, during his time as school principal at Calistoga Junior/Senior High School.He holds an Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership from the University of Laverne. Connect on LinkedIn.
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