Social Media Shaming Podcast Worksheets

This is a teacher's guide and worksheet to accompany the TED Radio Hour segment with Jon Ronson titled “How Can Our Real Lives Be Ruined By Our Digital Ones?” Students see online shaming first-hand, so this lesson was created to help them understand how and why relatively nice people can get caught up in malicious social media shaming.

UPDATE: Now includes links to Google Slides. Each worksheet is placed as the background on the Google Slide and the students create textboxes to input their answers.

Teacher guide details when to pause the audio and prompt discussion. The audio is approximately 15 minutes long, but there is a lot of ground to cover with discussion and students have a lot to say about the topics. The prompts are just general guides to help get students talking; however, the topics are engaging with students so once conversation begins students can easily take it over themselves. (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1)

Worksheet is a graphic organizer to organize information from the talk and analysis questions to meet CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.3. Students look at what Ronson's argument is about social media shaming and how it is changing our society. Along with identifying his arguments, they will look at what evidence he gives to support it and if the evidence is significant and relevant to the argument.

I include two links to NPR articles on social media shaming of the Charlottesville Rally and accompanying guide questions. The articles are relatively short, but they show the perceived positive and negative consequences of online social media shaming.

The final part of this product is a writing prompt asking students to take a stance on whether or not social media shaming is an acceptable way to help end or deter social injustices such as racism and sexual assault.

I hope your students enjoy it as much as mine did!