The Beginnings of A Graphic Novel About Misinformation

For an assignment for our final for class, I decided to create a few pages of a graphic novel explaining misinformation to middle grade readers (ages 9-12). This is a really pivotal age at which to level up digital media literacy education. Readers in this age range have likely already been exposed to a variety of forms of misinformation online, and may even be familiar with conspriacy theories. I chose the medium of graphic novels in the hopes that they might both be appealing to this age range, and also that they could be used as an educational resource/assigned reading in order to frame these issues in a fun way and hopefully provoke conversation both in an outside of the classroom about misinformation. Opening the door to these conversations is so important.

Illustration attribution: I used Recraft's AI tools to create the majority of the illustrations here and I also used Canva for formatting

The premise of the graphic novel is that three teenagers become enamored by a conspriacy theory regarding aliens and their local quarry, a conspiracy that they begin to see online, but that gradually spirals to being heard everywhere.

This section of the graphic novel breaks down a popular propoganda technique, and one that we've been seeing a lot lately from big figures such as RFK, who has spread "big lies" such as that vaccines cause autism. It includes and cites the research paper interesting if true about misinformation.

This page breaks down the illusory truth effect in a way that middle grade readers can understand. It helps to explain how misinformation can spread within our communities. It's important for kids to understand that adults can spread misinformation too, even trusted adults, so I made sure to include a lot of adults in the illustrations. Finally, I did one last panel to illustrate the SIFT method for kids (Stop, Investigate, Find better coverage, Trace claims)