Information and Influence: Information, Power & Democracy

Explore how information, media, technology, evidence, and communication influence people, communities, institutions, and societies. Explore how information can shape democracy, public debate, journalism, technology, social movements, and everyday decision-making. You will investigate media systems, journalistic ethics, ownership and influence, algorithms, artificial intelligence, digital citizenship, and careers that rely on evidence, communication, and trust.

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This Curiosity Collection provides a cross-curriculum exploration of information, media, power, trust, technology, ethics, and digital citizenship.

Learners investigate how information is created, controlled, shared, verified, and amplified, and how it can influence individuals, communities, governments, and societies. Through historical and contemporary examples, Pathfinders explore media and democracy, freedom of the press, censorship, propaganda, journalism, public interest, media ownership, representation, and diversity of viewpoints.

The Collection also examines how digital technologies are changing information environments. Learners investigate social media, algorithms, recommendation systems, filter bubbles, echo chambers, virality, generative AI, synthetic media, deepfakes, AI hallucinations, and methods of verification.

Pathfinders consider ethical questions about privacy, digital footprints, responsible sharing, freedom of expression, harmful communication, and digital citizenship. They compare perspectives, evaluate evidence, and consider how rights, responsibilities, technology, ownership, and access can influence trust and participation.

Learners also explore careers in journalism, law, science, technology, government, research, and communication where evidence, accuracy, ethical decision-making, and public trust are important.

As learners move through the Collection, they gather information, analyse evidence, investigate systems, compare perspectives, and develop a deeper understanding of how information shapes decision-making, participation, trust, and power. The Collection concludes with a project in which Pathfinders design a better information system for a real communication or information challenge.

The Collection is designed using inclusive learning principles, supporting diverse learning needs through self-paced exploration, clear instructions, flexible activity options, visual supports, and multiple ways for Pathfinders to engage, create, build, and reflect.

The Collection includes:

Learning Area Level, Code Descriptor
English – Language Level 10, VC2E10LA07 Evaluate the features of still and moving images, and the use of sound, and the effects of those choices on representations.
English – Literacy Level 10, VC2E10LY01 Use interaction skills to discuss an opinion about texts and analyse the purposes and effects of text structures and language features.
English – Literacy Level 10, VC2E10LY02 Deliver structured spoken texts for particular purposes, experimenting with formality in deliberate consideration of an audience, using features of voice and multimodal or digital elements.
English – Literacy Level 10, VC2E10LY04 Analyse and evaluate how people, places, events and concepts are represented in texts and reflect contexts.
English – Literacy Level 10, VC2E10LY05 Analyse and evaluate how language features are used to implicitly and explicitly represent values, beliefs and attitudes.
English – Literacy Level 10, VC2E10LY07 Integrate comprehension strategies such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring, questioning and inferring to analyse and interpret complex and abstract ideas.
English – Literacy Level 10, VC2E10LY08 Create different types of texts, written and spoken, that reflect on challenging and complex issues, including texts that combine specific print, multimodal and/or digital elements, for a range of purposes and in deliberate consideration of an audience.
English – Literacy Level 10, VC2E10LY09 Review, edit and refine their own texts and the texts of others for control and coherence of content, organisation, sentence structure, vocabulary, and/or visual features to achieve particular purposes and effects, and reflect on these processes.
Humanities – Civics & Citizenship Levels 9–10, VC2HC10K02 The processes through which government policy is shaped, developed and implemented, including the role of political parties, interest groups, the media and legislative processes.
Media Arts – Exploring Levels 9–10, VC2AMA10E01 Investigate the ways that media artists across cultures, times, places and other contexts use media arts concepts to construct representations in media arts works to communicate and challenge ideas, perspectives and meaning.
Media Arts – Developing Practices Levels 9–10, VC2AMA10D01 Experiment with media processes and skills, media language and media technologies throughout the production process to construct representations that reflect ideas, perspectives and meaning.
Media Arts – Creating Levels 9–10, VC2AMA10C01 Design and structure media arts works that communicate ideas, perspectives and meaning.
Media Arts – Creating Levels 9–10, VC2AMA10C02 Select and apply production processes and use media arts concepts to construct representations and produce media arts works that communicate ideas, perspectives and meaning to an intended audience.
Critical & Creative Thinking – Questions and Possibilities Levels 9–10, VC2CC10Q01 The construction and adaptation of questions to suit different contexts.
Critical & Creative Thinking – Questions and Possibilities Levels 9–10, VC2CC10Q02 When and how to critically reflect on suspension of judgement when generating and evaluating alternative ideas and possibilities from different perspectives.
Critical & Creative Thinking – Questions and Possibilities Levels 9–10, VC2CC10Q03 Strategies for generating new ideas and possibilities including identifying links and patterns across multiple information sources and perspectives.
Critical & Creative Thinking – Reasoning Levels 9–10, VC2CC10R01 Ways to analyse and improve the structure, clarity, consistency and coherence of a conclusion and its justification in different contexts.
Critical & Creative Thinking – Reasoning Levels 9–10, VC2CC10R02 Ways to analyse and evaluate claims and grounds for claims for the qualities of accuracy, precision, depth or breadth when reasoning, and ways to identify what qualities are required in different contexts.
Critical & Creative Thinking – Reasoning/td> Levels 9–10, VC2CC10R04 When and how criteria are refined to improve clarity and support analysis and evaluation, including of competing claims, when reasoning.
Critical & Creative Thinking – Metacognition Levels 9–10, VC2CC10M02 The importance of critical analysis of thinking processes in different contexts, including for problem-solving, considering factors such as cognitive biases.
Critical & Creative Thinking – Metacognition Levels 9–10, VC2CC10M03 The development and adaptation of criteria for evaluating the viability and sustainability of proposed solutions in different contexts.
Ethical Capability – Understanding Ethical Concepts and Perspectives Levels 9–10, VC2CE10U01 The distinction between ethical and legal, and the distinction, connection and/or tension between ethical concepts such as trust and integrity, or individual happiness and the common good, in different contexts.
Ethical Capability – Understanding Ethical Concepts and Perspectives Levels 9–10, VC2CE10U02 How and why ethical perspectives can be challenged and changed, such as increasing cultural diversity challenging a conception of shared expectations, and factors that support negotiating a shared ethical perspective such as respect for human rights.
Ethical Capability – Decision-making and Actions Levels 9–10, VC2CE10D01 How connections, distinctions and tensions between Ethical concepts and between ethical perspectives are used to identify and analyse ethical issues, including their ethical significance, and how they are used to analyse responses to ethical issues, including their ethical significance.
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