Poynter and MediaWise announce a new class of Campus Correspondents 

Poynter and MediaWise are pleased to announce that they have selected a new group of college students to serve in their next cohort of Campus Correspondents. These unique fact-finding students get paid to debunk misinformation online — and teach their peers to do the same. 

Over the course of the 2021/22 school year, these students will produce media literacy tips and fact-checking videos across social media platforms as well as lead virtual and in-person fact-checking workshops.

The students selected for the 2021/22 school year are:

Saurya Tuladhar, Dickinson College

Jamille Whitlow, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University 

Hayden Masia, Colgate University

Karly Graham, Michigan State University 

Lauren Yang Brown, University of Oregon 

Loren Miranda, University of Florida

Maddie Herron, University of Maryland

Lyndsay Valadez, Indiana University 

“We’ve chosen students who love social media, understand the dangers of online misinformation and have a knack for leadership and public speaking,” said program coordinator Barbara Allen, director of college programming for Poynter. “We’re really excited about the impact these students will have on the worlds of mis- and disinformation.”

This is the second year that MediaWise — a digital media literacy initiative — chose college students to teach crucial digital literacy skills to their peers.  

The MediaWise team will train our Campus Correspondents how to spot misinformation online, and where to find reliable, quality knowledge. By leading interactive workshops, the Campus Correspondents will train their peers on these important skills in trainings on campuses across the country. Campus Correspondents will conduct virtual media literacy workshops to schools nationwide, produce a range of educational social media content and create a 10-part Instagram PSA campaign.

If you are interested in having a Campus Correspondent visit your campus virtually (or IRL at some locations), please fill out this form. Best of all, this training is provided to student groups, classrooms and other college-related entities entirely for free.

The 2020 MediaWise Campus Correspondents was central to the success of the MediaWise Voter Project, a nonprofit and nonpartisan program of The Poynter Institute that taught digital literacy skills to more than 1 million first-time voters in 2020.

That inaugural group of 10 college students conducted more than 80 virtual digital literacy trainings to more than 2,000 of their peers across campuses in more than 20 states.

In addition to training their peers through Zoom, the Campus Correspondents created more than 50 fact checks, TikToks, and Instagram posts that garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

The 2021/22 Campus Correspondents will carry on that work, with a special focus on COVID-19 mis- and disinformation, which will be critical as students across the country head back to school, many of them for the first time in 18 months.

Lauren Yang Brown is a rising senior at the University of Oregon who was recently selected for the program.

“Just these past couple weeks, I feel like I’ve learned so much from the Campus Correspondent Program,” she said “I can’t wait to learn more about spotting misinformation on the internet and teaching others how to do the same. These are skills I’ll pretty much be using for the rest of my life.”

The Campus Correspondents program is made possible thanks to support from Facebook and Instagram