Do you even Media, Bro?

My second digital presentation is about this very topic. Media literacy is a fundamental knowledge in this day and age. Fabricated news and information isn't just a modern phenomenon. Historically, there have been many cases of false information being disseminated to the public. From the Great Moon Hoax in the 1800s, to what we witnessed during the pandemic a mere four years ago, sensationalism has always been something that sold papers. 

• The fin de siècle newspaper proprietor by F. Opper. 
• "Print shows a newspaper owner, possibly meant to be Joseph Pulitzer, sitting in a chair in his office next to an open safe where "Profits" are spilling out onto the floor; outside this scene are many newspaper reporters for the "Daily Splurge" rushing to the office to toss their stories onto the printing press, such stories as "A Week as a Tramp!! Wild and Exciting Experiences of a Daily Splurge Reporter", "A Reporter of the Daily Splurge Spends a Thrilling Week in an Asylum!", "An Organ Grinder's Life", "Life in Sing Sing - a Splurge Reporter in Disguise", "Divorce Court Details", "Private Scandal", "a Night Around Town" by a woman reporter "in Men's Attire", life on the streets "As a Flower Girl", "Thrilling Exposé", "How beggars are treated on 5th Ave. by Fanny Fake", and "High Spiced Sensation". A notice hanging on the wall of the office states "The Motto of the Daily Splurge - Morality and a High Sense of Duty"." -Library of Congress 
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• Not only that but fake information was used as a tactic to elicit dangerous stereotypes that contributed to the eradication of people across the world. Today, we receive information at lightning speed. With each new refresh of a page, we get inundated with new headlines. We are navigating in a new era where information (and by extension, education) is available at our fingertips. 
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• Since the early days of the internet, it's been ingrained in our brains to not believe everything you see on the internet. While social media platforms allow people to socialize, communicate, and share their lives and other information, this can be the perfect circumstance with how quickly information gets shared. 
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• Howard Rheingold wonderfully breaks down best practices for analyzing social media in his article Attention, and Other 21st-Century Social Media Literacies. He names 5 social media literacies that are fundamental for consuming sources online: 
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• Attention, which he goes to explain is the utmost fundamental basis for critical thinking. Arguing that with the technology of the time, students weren't as engaged in the classroom due to phones and computers taking away their focus. He believes that it is integral for students to understand that there is a good time to utilize these platforms in classrooms. While social media and other emerging technologies help with connectivity in virtual settings, that environment can be small, and it is just as important to be aware of more public settings as well. 
  
  
• Participation is the second point he brings up. With high-definition cameras becoming part of our phones and social media platforms encouraging the sharing of people's lives, we have seen the results of an incredible increase in connectivity. Twitter is a great example, showcasing how immediate discourse can be had in real-time to an event. Many are utilizing these platforms as a way to organize, and influence others. Rheingold states that these platforms "enable people to inform, persuade, and influence the beliefs of others and, most important, help them to organize action on all scales" (20). 
  
  
• With that comes collaboration. The participation of individuals on social media will inevitably lead to collaboration. As a result, many different communities are established, empowering these groups to take action together. Platforms have used this to their power and advantage. Rheingold mentions Twestival as an example.  Twestival or Twitter Festival first "held in 2009, supported the nonprofit organization charity:water. Approximately 1,000 volunteers and 10,000 donors raised more than $250,000—enough money to drill 55 wells in Uganda, Ethiopia, and India, bringing clean water to more than 17,000 people" (20). 
  

These collaborations lead to network awareness, which allows for more widespread collaborative efforts than what we have been able to see previously. Due to the global reach of the internet as well as social media, it allows us to connect with people which would have been nearly impossible to do without online connectivity. "The technical networks amplify and extend the fundamental human capability of forming social networks" (22). While this can be a positive in information dissemination, of course this can cause problems. To be fluent in media literacy, we have to question "Who is going to take up your mind, your space? Is the person trustworthy? Entertaining? Useful? An expert?" (22). 

Finally, critical consumption would be the questioning part of the prior point. Who and what resources are trustworthy? Is the information that they're sharing fact? Is it credible? These are all questions that users must think of upon interacting with content. Similar to information literacy, we must analyze the content and context of what we encounter online. It's easy to fake information. I mean just look at Catfish, the show on MTV (seriously I got catfished for an entire year in my previous relationship but that's a story for a different time). 

(image source: MTV on Giphy)

At the end of the day, users need to be able to navigate these platforms in a way that we are all consuming as well as creating safe and relatable content. While Rheingold's article was written 13 years ago, it still holds true. The technological landscape has changed significantly in those years, and there seems to be a shift in how these platforms are utilized by their users. Despite that being the case, these points still apply to navigating the platforms today. 

Rheingold's point is extended, I believe in  Renee Hobbs's 5 competencies that social media and the internet not only students but users, in general, should abide by. I also mentioned similar points (though shortened) in my presentation. Firstly, is being able to locate and identify relevant information, which would showcase their competency in access. Analysis allows users to critically think about the resources that they are consuming. Users should be able to identify "message purpose, target audience, quality, veracity, credibility, point of view, and potential effects or consequences of messages." To foster these ideals, of course, when creating, we must produce content that is not only true to themselves and their expressions, but also with an awareness of purpose, audience, and composition techniques." Reflection allows the users to examine the message of the content they are being exposed to. Finally acting in collaboration or singularly, to participate in the community locally or at large. 

Despite how our communication and information dissemination has changed over the years, there are still similar patterns of tabloid sensationalism that was seen even in the early ages of the printing press. To an extent, I do agree with Marshall McLuhan's idea that "The Medium is the Message." We would still have to apply similar techniques regardless of the medium in which it is presented. I brought up the 1938 Broadcast of War of the Worlds and the frenzy that it caused because audiences believed it to be true. We can still see that the delivery of this broadcast was what made the story so believable. These new methods have changed the way we consume these contents. 

However, some people have difficulty being able to transition from the methods from before the internet to this fast-moving network. This resulted in a lot of misinformation being shared at rapid speed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have become more critical, I and a lot of others that I know do their due diligence when seeing claims. 

To instill this habit, adults in children's lives need to open communication about information and media literacy. Encouraging skepticism, exploring multiple outlooks as well as sources, and helping them to reflect on what should and shouldn't be shared would help them in healthy media consumption. Introducing them to different activities could help them build up new habits in reacting to different types of content. 

Some of the resources that could be used include: 

Teach your students foundational news and media literacy skills with these free lesson plans.

Media Literacy Guide for K-12

Project Look Sharp

Introducing websites like 

Snopes

Politifact

Factcheck.org 

can be tools to help students identify falsified headlines. 

My current place of employment offers information literacy workshops, in which we touch on media literacy. Some of the tactics used in information literacy can definitely also be applied to media as well.