What is media literacy?
Media literacy is the ability to understand the information shared via social media and related digital technology, and to be able to distinguish between the message and effect. It is the ability to critically interpret content on social media and determine whether it is fact, opinion, or persuasion.
Why is it important?
Media literacy is incredibly important, for users of all ages. Again, this is how social media presents harm and benefit through providing a platform for any individual to share information. The problem becomes apparent when people do not know how to separate information into fact, experience, opinion, bias, intent, and purpose. Another issue is that information shared often exists as a combination of all these factors. Moreover, most users tend to take such information as inherently truthful, rather than critically analyzing it. As discussed in the video with Julie Smith on media literacy, we are currently in an environment with essentially infinite information, so much so that it becomes highly challenging to separate the complex network of fact. With unprecedented opportunity to share information online, it is logical that misinformation is highly prevalent. There are a multitude of examples that demonstrate this, but perhaps the most divisive and recent is the anti-vaccine rhetoric that occurred during the COVID pandemic. Anti-vaccine individuals utilized the lack of media literacy skills among the general population to spread misinformation, fear, and hate. Thus, it became a highly politicized and dangerous belief system that many people took as truth. I recall, back in 2021, talking to my aunt about getting my vaccine when she became angry and defiant; following the same misinformed rhetoric spread by anti-vaccine content creators. I explained how the information she took as truth has countless studies and scientific evidence disproving it, but she chose to ignore it. She didn’t have the media literacy skills to understand how to interpret information on social media, and used that information to build a belief system that disallowed contradicting views. In this way, building media literacy is a crucial piece of media usage and protection, because once embedded as fact, it becomes difficult to dissuade. This relates to a psychological concept called confirmation bias, wherein people tend to seek out information that confirms their pre-existing views and reject information that contradicts them. Thus, without adequate media literacy skills, the information found online is believed, ingrained, and confirmed in an iterative cycle. As demonstrated by this example, the lack of media literacy can have significant consequences on politics, family, public health, and employment. Therefore, media literacy is an important tool to develop when interacting with social media.
Why is it dismissed?
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, people have a tendency to take information on social media as truth and often do not see the need to critically analyze it. Moreover, the implications of confirmation bias demonstrate that people are often unwilling to analyze information that aligns with their viewpoints. As a result, media literacy is dismissed as unnecessary, useless, or inapplicable. We take the words of others as truthful, forgetting that most everyone has ulterior motives, whether good or bad. As mentioned in the video with Julie Smith, with such expansive information, it becomes the user’s problem to sort through, analyze, and develop literacy skills. This work defeats the purpose of mindlessly scrolling on TikTok or Twitter to create an environment that requires conscious effort. This is work that most people do not care to engage in, and thus reinforces the dismissal of media literacy skills. As a person who grew up with technology, I was never taught media literacy skills because they were never seen as important. I have media literacy skills as a result of my university education, which taught me how to critically analyze research. This skill has transferred to media literacy, but it was not intentional. Even now, when I search up media literacy, the articles are targeted towards parents of young children. Media literacy is viewed as a children’s tool, rather than an important skill for all. It is both assumed that information online is truth, and that we should be able to discriminate between fact and opinion easily without being taught.
Why should you aim for varied views but factual consensus in your PLN?
As social media is an excellent place to participate in learning from diverse perspectives, it is important to aim for a PLN that includes these voices. However, as mentioned, it is also important these perspectives have a factual basis. Within my PLN, I try to ensure the people I interact with are either personal friends, accredited professionals, or those who share personal experience. As well, I uphold my personal values of inclusivity and social justice in my PLN to further curate this. Factual information without the accreditation of research and/or scientific evidence is dismissed until I can properly research the claims. Social media is a powerful tool of global communication, but one must ensure that information is critically analyzed before integrating it into a belief system.
References:
https://www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/what-is-media-literacy
YouTube – EDCI 338 – MEDIA LITERACY with JULIE SMITH
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