1 - Start ~4 mins
You have already practised spotting when content is wrong on purpose and when it is wrong by mistake. Today the focus shifts to people who make a living from your attention: influencers and content creators.
An influencer or content creator builds an audience online and earns from that attention (brand deals, affiliate links, platform payments). That business model is not automatically dishonest, but it does change how posts are built.
You will take one invented creator post apart piece by piece, then argue how much you should trust recommendations from people who get paid when you keep watching.
2 - Examine and Discuss ~5 mins
Three layers sit inside a lot of creator content:
- Sponsored: paid or gifted by a brand, and should be disclosed (for example #ad, #gifted, or Paid partnership).
- Opinion: what the creator actually thinks, likes or recommends.
- Designed to keep you watching: hooks, cliffhangers, dramatic claims, like counts and urgency that hold attention whether or not anything is being sold.
In Ireland, if a post is selling something it should be obvious it is an ad, not dressed up as a casual tip.
Before you tear a post apart: do you usually notice when a creator is being paid, or do you mainly notice whether you like them?
3 - Hands-on: Forensic Teardown of a Creator Post ~13 mins
Work through the interactive activity together. You are investigating one invented creator post. Tap each part and decide what it is doing, then collect the persuasion tricks as you find them.
| Layer | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Sponsored | Someone paid for this to be here. A discount code, “gifted”, an affiliate link, or an ad label tucked at the end of the caption. |
| Real opinion | What the creator actually thinks, including the bits that are not flattering to the product. |
| Designed to keep you watching | A hook in the first two seconds, a cliffhanger, “part 2 tomorrow”, or a question posted to farm replies. |
“Use KYLA10 at checkout” → sponsored: there is a code, so someone is paying per sale.
“Wait for the end, you will not believe it” → designed to keep you watching: it promises payoff rather than information.
Be ready to say which layer each trick you find belongs to.
Interactive activity
4 - Hands-on: Build the Sponsored Post ~12 mins
Make a sponsored post that uses three of the tricks you have just pulled apart.
Every picture in the library says whether it is free to reuse, needs a credit, or is off limits. One of them will refuse to be used. Check before you place, and open Credits at the end for anything that needs crediting.
You have just taken a creator's post apart. Now build one.
Pick something to sell from Products and ads - a hoodie, an energy drink, a gaming chair - and make a sponsored post for it, deliberately using THREE of the techniques the class named: a big promise, borrowed authority, big numbers, hurry-hurry, tiny small print.
Do not label them. The class is going to name them from your post alone, which only works if the post is good enough to be convincing.
Your work saves as you go. Use the save button to keep a copy on your own device.
Build the sponsored post
5 - Make Sense ~3 mins
Pull the layers back together. Influencers and content creators shape what you see by mixing three things: paid promotion, personal opinion, and techniques that hold attention. None of those layers is automatically good or bad on its own. The media-literacy skill is naming which layer you are looking at, noticing whether sponsorship is clear, and deciding how much weight a recommendation deserves before you act on it.
Your own one-sentence trust rule is the takeaway you carry forward, not a class verdict. Hear two or three strong rules from the room: when would you trust, and when would you double-check?
Unlock the full learning experience
You're previewing this lesson. Get full access to this lesson and hundreds more — each one ready to teach, with interactive activities, printable resources and pupil progress tracking built in.
This lesson is copyright of DigitalSkills.org 2017 - 2025. Unauthorised use, copying or distribution is not allowed.