Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and act using all forms of communication. It's an essential life skill that empowers you to be both a critical thinker and an effective communicator.
Media literacy is just one branch of the literacy tree!
Sources: The National Association for Media Literacy Education, the University of Iowa Office of Teaching, Learning & Technology & Project Look Sharp.
Fake news itself comes in a variety of flavors:
Pure fake news sites use fabricated stories to lure traffic, encourage clicks (click bait), influence or profit using intentionally deceptive, but highly intriguing, often sensational information.
Hoax sites also share false information with the intention to trick readers/viewers
Satirical sites present news with a comical, often exaggerated spin
Born digital images and edited images alter and often misrepresent visual reality
Source: School Library Journal
In their 2017 study, Allcott & Gentzkow isolate potential social costs to the production and dissemination of "fake news":
In their 2017 study "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow define "Fake News" as "news articles that are intentionally and verifiably false, and could mislead readers." They also delineate several "close cousins":
Use the tools in this guide to develop your own definition!
Satire or Parody - Content has no intention to cause harm but has potential to fool.
False Connection - Headlines or visuals don't support assertions of content.
Misleading Content - Misleading use of information to frame an issue or individual.
False Context - Genuine content is shared with false contextual information.
Imposter Content - Genuine sources are impersonated.
Manipulated Content - Genuine information is manipulated in order to deceive.
Fabricated Content - New content is false, and is designed to deceive and do harm.
The terms "misinformation" and "disinformation" are all over the news. The terms are similar in that they both denote information that's false. However, they are not interchangeable!
Misinformation - False or inaccurate information, especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive. Source: Oxford English Dictionary
Disinformation - False information which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government organization to a rival power or the media. Source: Oxford English Dictionary
The capacity of artificial intelligence to manufacture and distribute content quickly and efficiently has made it ever more difficult to sort out fact from fiction. Per a June 2023 New York Times analysis, election officials are increasingly concerned about the ability of candidates to rapidly disseminate misinformation, disinformation and propaganda via text and video.
"The problem is not that some people might believe something that’s not true. The problem is that most people might stop caring if anything is true."
- Siva Vaidhyanathan, Director, University of Virginia Center for Media & Citizenship
Source: Factcheck.org
Source: Chainsawsuit.com
Social media and technology have changed the way we access the news. Many of us get our news from our social media feeds rather than directly from journalists.
Social media news feeds use algorithms to show us posts that align with our opinions and interests. That means we usually see news articles that confirm our own viewpoints. This phenomenon is called the "filter bubble."
"The downside is...social channels [e.g.YouTube, Instagram] present information to people most likely to believe them.” - Renee DiResta, Stanford Internet Observatory
Adapted from: Colby-Sawyer College Library & Tobias Rose-Stockwell/Medium
How do you know what to believe?
Humans are hardwired to engage with information that garners an emotional response, and online algorithms are set to maximize their engagement in order to increase revenues. The result is a media diet that sows anger, distrust and fear. In an attempt to break the cycle, the News Literacy Project has created Trust Me, a feature length documentary and educational program that explores manipulation and misinformation at the intersection of human nature and information technology. It includes classroom-friendly clips, curriculum, discussion guides and more.
Caulfield, M. (2017). Web literacy for student fact-checkers.
Jamieson, K. H. & B. Jackson (2007). unSpun: Finding facts in a world of disinformation. Random House.
Kovach, B. & T. Rosenstiel (2010). Blur: How to know what’s true in an age of information overload. Bloomsbury USA.
Montell, A. (2021). Cultish: The language of fanaticism. Harper Collins.
Sharot, T. (2017). The Influential mind: What the brain reveals about our power to change others. Macmillan.
Stebbins, L F. (2015). Finding reliable information online: Adventures of an information sleuth. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
From our catalog:
A Field Guide to Lies by
Winner of the National Business Book Award From the New York Times bestselling author of The Organized Mind and This Is Your Brain on Music, a primer to the critical thinking that is more necessary now than ever We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process--especially in election season. It's raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. New York Times bestselling author Daniel J. Levitin shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports, revealing the ways lying weasels can use them. It's becoming harder to separate the wheat from the digital chaff. How do we distinguish misinformation, pseudo-facts, and distortions from reliable information? Levitin groups his field guide into two categories--statistical information and faulty arguments--ultimately showing how science is the bedrock of critical thinking. Infoliteracy means understanding that there are hierarchies of source quality and bias that variously distort our information feeds via every media channel, including social media. We may expect newspapers, bloggers, the government, and Wikipedia to be factually and logically correct, but they so often aren't. We need to think critically about the words and numbers we encounter if we want to be successful at work, at play, and in making the most of our lives. This means checking the plausibility and reasoning--not passively accepting information, repeating it, and making decisions based on it. Readers learn to avoid the extremes of passive gullibility and cynical rejection. Levitin's charming, entertaining, accessible guide can help anyone wake up to a whole lot of things that aren't so. And catch some weasels in their tracks!
Metaliterate Learning for the Post-Truth World by
Foreword by Troy A. Swanson Metaliteracy is especially well suited as a tool for ensuring that learners can successfully navigate the proliferation of fake news, questionable content, and outright denialism of facts in today's information morass. Indeed, it is starkly evident that the competencies, knowledge, and personal attributes specific to metaliterate individuals are critical; digital literacy and traditional conceptions of information literacy are insufficient for the significant challenges we currently face. This book examines the newest version of the Metaliteracy Goals and Learning Objectives, including the four domains of metaliterate learning, as well as the relationship between metaliteracy and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Featuring contributions from a variety of information literacy instructors, educators, librarians, and faculty, the chapters in this book discuss the social, political, and ethical dimensions of information creation, distribution, and use; use case studies to demonstrate how metaliteracy guides learners to read online information with a critical eye, apply metacognitive thinking to the consumption of all information, and make purposeful and responsible contributions to the social media ecosystem as active participants; examine when images are taken out of context and paired with misleading text, a prevalent feature of the misinformation frequently shared via social media; and situates metaliteracy in such contexts such as the academic library, a science class, fiction writing, digital storytelling, and a theater arts course. Metaliteracy is a powerful model for preparing learners to be responsible participants in today's divisive information environment, and this book showcases several teaching and learning practices that have already proven effective.
Mind over Media by
Winner of the AAP 2021 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences. Propaganda is inescapable. It's everywhere. Students need to analyze, resist, critique--and create. Media literacy educators have always insisted that we are both creators and receivers of media messages. The truth of this is even more apparent in today's digital environment, with children and adults alike participating in a ubiquitous, nonstop stream of social media. Clearly, students need the tools to interpret news and information critically--not just for school but for life in a "post-truth" world, where the lines blur between entertainment, information, and persuasion. Renee Hobbs demonstrates how a global perspective on contemporary propaganda enables educators to stimulate both the intellectual curiosity and the cultural sensitivities of students. Replete with classroom and online learning activities and samples of student work, Mind Over Media provides a state-of-the-art look at the theory and practice of propaganda in contemporary society, and shows how to build learners' critical thinking and communication skills on topics including computational propaganda, content marketing, fake news, and disinformation.
The Stewart/Colbert Effect: essays on the real impacts of fake news by
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report have attracted much interest in recent years from popular audiences as well as scholars in various disciplines. Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have been named on Time magazine's list of the most influential people in the world. The ten essays in this interdisciplinary collection explore the issues engendered by the popularity of entertainment news, including the role of satire in politics, the declining level of trust in traditional sources of media, the shows' cathartic or informational function, and the ways in which these shows influence public opinion. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.