How to Adjust Your “Brights” to See Through the Fog of “Fake” News

Posted on August 1, 2018 by medialiteracyeducationmaven

If you’ve ever found yourself on the road in a dense fog, you know the anxiety of trying to navigate when the cues usually available to you are obscured. It’s easy to get confused. Some days it feels like that’s what has happened with news.

One of the new truths of the digital world: With relative ease, anyone with enough skill or the right software can
 › Fake photographs,
 › Invent documentation to support conspiracies,
 › Manipulate video or audio to literally put words in people’s mouths, and
 › Amplify intentional distortions or deceptions by creating hundreds of bots disguised as social media profiles.

photo source Jane Tims 2012

At the same time we rely on accurate information for all sorts of things, grand and small – like the continued existence of democracy, determining where we might want to live, work, or go to school, or even what brand of toothpaste we choose. We rightfully feel some urgency to illuminate our way, concerned that the haze of deceptive news seems to be getting thicker.
We know that if the atmosphere gets too murky, we can find ourselves immobilized with frustration, confusion, or the cynical (and mistaken) conclusion that no one tells the truth. It’s tempting to just pull off to the side and wait for things to clear. Of course, unlike a fogged-in road, there is no guarantee that the system will ever clear. So if we don’t want to be stuck where we are forever, what can we do to move forward? How do we shine a light through the fog so it doesn’t just bounce back and make the problem worse? ¹

There are no easy shortcuts. Isolated news literacy strategies are important, but insufficient. It is useful to know how to spot a spoofed news site by looking closely at a URL, identify a bot by looking at its activity history, use a reverse image search, or find backlinks to a website. But these tools only help after people have already identified a story or source as suspicious. And they rely on the longshot expectation that everyone is willing to devote the time and effort needed to use them. Moreover, these tools don’t address structural weaknesses of commercially constructed news – news that isn’t typically intentionally deceptive, but nonetheless is created in ways that lead people to distrust journalists.

Despite these challenges, things aren’t hopeless. Zooming out from news literacy to a more comprehensive set of media literacy skills can provide habits of inquiry and skills of expression that instill a sort of internal guidance system. Media literate people develop routines that become automatic, so the brain can’t look at news without asking analysis and reflection questions.

The process is much like learning to read print. Once your brain has learned the alphabet’s symbol-sound correlation, and learned that letters strung together form words, your healthy brain can never again look at text like this and not see words. Evne if teh sntense iz wrttten as gibrsh, you can read it because the brain’s default is to make sense of the world. Similarly, media literacy skills can help make sense of a muddled news environment. Media literacy isn’t a foolproof answer, but in terms of getting where you want to go, it can tilt the odds in your favor.

To give a sense of the skill set I’m talking about, here’s a “mini course” of sixteen media literacy strategies I use to make my way through the miasma:

 Ask relevant questions and ask them ROUTINELY.
 Use common sense.
 Check multiple sources from diverse perspectives.
 Instead of “balance,” look for fair, accurate, inclusive and thorough reporting.
 Focus on the evidence, not the “bias” of the reporter.
 Look for “independently verified” reports.
 Consider your source’s sources.
 Don’t confuse sender with source.
 Be aware of how media content is influenced by revenue structures.
 Accept that you are human.
 Don’t believe everything you see.
 Pay attention to infographics.
 Differentiate between satire sites and deceptive “news” sites.
 Make friends with a fact-checking site.
 Don’t substitute online tools for your own critical thinking.
 Think of yourself as a publisher.

♦ Ask relevant questions and ask them ROUTINELY.

Have you ever seen one of those movies where the hero is faced with a choice: There are two seemingly identical people in front of them. One is their partner and the other a doppelganger created by their enemy. Shooting the wrong one means failure and death. How does the hero determine which is genuine? By asking just the right questions, of course! Media literacy is a bit like that.

Don’t just question things that seem objectionable or “off” to you; make it a habit to question everything. Even the most trustworthy sources don’t get everything right 100% of the time. Always ask, “Who benefits?” from you believing or disbelieving a story. Get intimate with the Key Categories of media literacy questions.

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♦ Use common sense.

No one can be an expert in everything. The good news is, you don’t need to be. When you feel ill-equipped to judge specific claims, ask:
What else would have to be true for what I am reading/viewing to be true?
For example, how many people would have to be in on the conspiracy promulgated by Alex Jones (Infowars) that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax? How likely is it that the number of people with first-hand knowledge of the event would all keep the “secret”? How likely is it that the types of such people would perpetrate a hoax (which, in this case, in addition to journalists, would include clergy, police officers, medical professionals, parents, teachers, children, etc.)?

Or ask: What would I have to disbelieve in order to believe that this claim is true? For example, in order to believe that human actions aren’t a major contributor to global warming, you have to disbelieve 80% of the world’s national science academies and a whopping 97% of research papers on climate change published in peer-reviewed science journals. And you’d have to explain how it is that scientists from a range of fields (climatology, geology, oceanography, biology, etc.), each using different approaches to research and measurement, all get results pointing to human actions. I suppose anything is possible if you stretch reason far enough, but this level of scientific consensus can’t be explained by coincidence or collusion. Dismissing it requires an active effort to live in denial.

Sometimes the weight of logic is enough to provide confidence in your conclusion.

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♦ Check multiple sources from diverse perspectives.

It’s not just about conservative vs. liberal. There are contrasts between commercial and independent media; newspapers, social media, and television; activists, academic experts, and traditional journalists, etc.
Checking different types of sources and understanding the differences between them:
• Provides a more complete picture of the issues.
• Lets you see who is repeating the story and who is ignoring it.
Among other benefits, this can help you avoid a common trap set by conspiracy theorists who:

Step 1: Invent a story (knowing that anyone who does traditional fact checking will dismiss it as nonsense).
Step 2: Complain that mainstream journalists won’t cover the story.
Step 3: Claim that mainstream journalists won’t cover the story because they are in the pocket of [insert demon of the day here]; Only the originator of the conspiracy theory is brave enough to resist establishment pressure.
Step 4: Use the refusal to cover the story as fodder to grow the original conspiracy theory.

Learn to recognize the pattern and be skeptical of any story that is reported/repeated exclusively by overtly partisan sources or individual bloggers.

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♦ Instead of “balance,” look for fair, accurate, inclusive and thorough reporting.

If 300 people believe that the moon is made of cheese and 300 billion disagree, should those two perspectives be presented in a balanced way, especially if there is overwhelming evidence that the 300 cheese mongers are wrong? Reporters committed to “balance” might. They’ve fallen into the trap of “false equivalence” – the logical fallacy that gives equal weight to two sides, even though nearly all available evidence supports only one side.

To avoid the distorted view that is produced when journalists prioritize balance:

• Apply added skepticism to sources that use the word “debate” to describe something that is actually settled for the vast majority of people (e.g. the “debate” over whether cigarette smoking causes cancer).
• Question stories that reduce complex issues to just two sides. This is the opposite of “inclusion.” Rather than seek comment from all relevant perspectives (including minority views which are identified as such), the story stops after it has described just two perspectives.

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♦ Focus on the evidence, not the “bias” of the reporter.

Labels – assuming they are accurate (and often they are not) – can be helpful in identifying perspective, but they don’t substitute for looking at evidence and its connection to conclusions. Too often we determine credibility by using political, religious, ethnic, or national labels and summarily dismissing everything said by anyone who isn’t part of the group with which we identify. We charge our opponents with being biased while assuming our allies are speaking objective truth.

Media literate people don’t waste time trying to determine whether something is biased. We already know the answer to that question: It is. There is bias in all human communication (including news). There is no such thing as objectivity.

What media literate people do instead is to ask what the substance, source, and significance of a bias might be. And we look for reporting from responsible journalists from diverse perspectives who acknowledge their biases, follow the evidence with an open mind, verify the evidence they expect us to rely on, and commit to thorough reporting that is fair, accurate, and inclusive.

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♦ Look for “independently verified” reports.

U.S. intelligence sources have recently provided substantial evidence that the Russian government spread fake news by creating an “echo chamber” of hundreds of phony news outlets and social media accounts/bots. To a casual observer who isn’t media literate, it looks like lots of sources are reporting the story, so it must be credible, right? Nope.

By itself, repetition doesn’t make a story credible. An unsubstantiated original claim is still misleading, even if it is repeated by a thousand other sources. Instead of relying on numbers, look for sources that say they have “independently verified” another source’s claims. That means their journalists have done their own investigation to confirm someone else’s reporting before sharing it with you.

Ready to go even further? You can also use tools like openlinkprofiler.org to see who links to a particular website or who owns it. Sometimes we can judge a source by the company it keeps!

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♦ Consider your source’s sources.

Who is interviewed or quoted? Whose voices are valued? Whose are absent? What qualifies someone as an “expert”? Are the subjects of the story speaking for themselves, or are others speaking for or about them?

Using those questions, how would you judge a story about reproductive rights that fails to query any women? How about a piece on air pollution that relies exclusively on fossil fuel industry statistics? Or a story about your neighborhood that quotes city officials but no one who actually lives in the neighborhood? You get the idea.

It’s also helpful to ask yourself, What did the journalist have to do to get the information they reported? Are they interpreting research or merely reporting it? Is the information easy to verify? The language used often provides clues. Consider these examples:

For dessert, the restaurant offers only vanilla or chocolate ice cream.

Simple statement of fact, easy for anyone to verify from publicly available information (by going to the restaurant and looking at the menu). The easier something is to verify, the more believable it is, even if you don’t take the time to verify it yourself.

According to the restaurant’s owner, the chef wanted to add pie to the dessert menu, but the kitchen didn’t have the oven-space available.

Though there isn’t an actual quote, the phrase “according to” means that an interview took place. This is also relatively easy to verify (by asking the owner if it’s what they said), though it doesn’t guarantee that the person being interviewed (i.e., the source) is telling the truth. That’s why good journalists rarely rely on a single source.

Other staff members reported overhearing a heated argument between the owner and chef, and that the owner was just too cheap to offer anything except ice cream.

It’s a sign of quality journalism that the reporter tried to confirm the owner’s claim. However, salacious details (like “the owner is cheap”) should always elicit extra attention to sourcing. In this case, the sourcing is anonymous. It could be that people really did overhear an argument but weren’t willing to be identified for fear of being fired. On the other hand, anonymous sourcing – especially when it isn’t accompanied by an explanation of why it is anonymous – is always a signal to use caution.

In July, twice as many customers selected vanilla as ordered chocolate.

This sounds like a simple statement of fact, but if you think about it, it actually requires research over time. It’s not likely that people would argue over the interpretation of the numbers, but it is information that the restaurant must track and also be willing to share. It isn’t the type of information that is available publicly, though you might be able to verify it via a customer survey or vendor delivery records. What’s most likely is that the reporter trusts the restaurant management to supply accurate information. You have to decide whether you think the restaurant has a motive to fudge the numbers.

The July results are not surprising given that vanilla is the best ice cream flavor.

If a statement tells you how to feel about the facts (it’s “not surprising”) or includes a superlative (like “best”), it’s an opinion. The exception is if a superlative can be independently verified (e.g., today was the coldest day on record).

Also, don’t automatically accept expertise in the form of a think tank affiliation, an academic title, or a journal citation. There are lots of for-profit and partisan look-alikes out there. For example, could you distinguish between these?
Journal of Food and Nutrition Sciences
International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition
Nutrition and Food Science International Journal
International Journal of Food and Nutritional Sciences
Journal of Food Science and Nutrition

Those that hide the names of reviewers, editorial board members, or funders should give you pause.

And then there are the “astroturf” organizations, with names intended to make you think they are something that they are not. For example, the Center for Consumer Freedom implies that it is a consumer group fighting for individual choice, but it’s actually a food industry funded group founded to attack critics. Credentials or affiliations should never be a substitute for evidence or logic.

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♦ Don’t confuse sender with source.

People who reply “Facebook” when challenged to explain “How do you know?” or “Where did you get that idea?” are confused. Facebook may be where you saw a story, but it is not a source. Neither are Instagram, Google, or Twitter (or any other social network or ISP). These are aggregators of stories from other sources.

Similarly, a friend who sends you a story is not the source of that story. Always judge the story itself; don’t judge the story by how well you like your friend.

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♦ Be aware of how media content is influenced by revenue structures.

All commercial media depend on audience numbers for revenue. The higher the user numbers, the more they can charge advertisers and/or the more data they generate (which they sell). This effects the way that they craft news.

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Media owners know that our brains thrive on narratives and great stories typically involve conflict, scandal, or danger. We find controversy or calamity more interesting than serious analysis. Don’t you watch more TV or check your news feeds more often when there’s crisis than when things are calm?

So we get headlines like “iPads are ruining baby’s brains” instead of clear explanations of the complex and nuanced research about screen time for young children. Controversy sells. Substantive science, not so much.

Or, instead of in-depth examinations of candidates’ positions on key issues, we get reports about which candidate is ahead in the polls, because that frames it as a race and competitions are exciting! Or we get non-stop coverage of mass shootings or natural disasters, even when there isn’t any new information to share.

Strictly speaking, hyping the dramatic doesn’t make news deceptive, but such coverage makes it seem like the sensational should rightfully be prioritized even when there are substantive stories more deserving of our attention. Media literacy educators call this “agenda-setting.” Media aren’t necessarily telling us what to think, but by devoting their energies to some stories while ignoring others, they’re telling us what to think about. Sometimes profit motives and the public interest intersect, but not every significant story serves commercial interests. So if you rely only on commercial media, you are missing important information.

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Another handy tidbit to know is that in mainstream news sources, it is standard practice to have headlines written by someone other than the journalist who wrote the story. Sometimes the headline writer is too busy to read the article carefully and just plain gets it wrong. And while headline writers don’t typically intend to mislead, when profits are a priority it is more important for a headline to attract readers than to faithfully reflect an article’s content. So if a headline peaks your interest, it’s essential to actually read the article.

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Clickbait is another product of profit driven media. It exists because it generates hits, and hits generate revenue. Fortunately, clickbait is usually easy to spot: Headlines that feature superlatives, promise to shock you, or offer infallible solutions to intractable problems are more likely to link to stories that are entertaining than informative (or factual). Also watch out for sites that lure you with provocative pictures that turn out to have nothing to do with the content of the articles they accompany.

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We also see commercial interests at work in the way search engines operate. Organizations and businesses pay to have their sites appear at the top of the search results (or in a sidebar). That doesn’t make those sites deceptive; it’s just important to know that the list you get is not neutral.

Likewise, it is important to know that the search results you get (and the things that appear in your news feeds) are “personalized,” i.e., they are based on data that the platform or service provider has gathered about you from your search history and the things you’ve clicked on. This means that you and a friend could do the same search, or you could do the same search on two different devices, and come up with very different results.

The practice of using our past behaviors to provide us with new choices can create what Eli Pariser called a “filter bubble.” The bubble can distort our perception of the world because it suppresses alternative perspectives and creates an environment in which it appears that everyone agrees with what we already believe. Social identity theory suggests that this is likely to heighten societal divisions because it reinforces our tendency to conform our behavior to match those we are with and favor those in our “in group” while attacking those we perceive as outsiders. That gets us back to the importance of pro-actively expanding our environment by seeking information from diverse sources (see the 3rd bullet).

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♦ Accept that you are human.

The way that we interpret news is influenced by the ways that human brains process information. Our brains leave us vulnerable to:

• Confirmation bias – the tendency to seek or favor information that “confirms” our existing beliefs. It can undermine critical thinking unless we develop the habit of questioning everything, not just things we find objectionable.

• Repetition. Our brains thrive on new input and don’t like wasting capacity to process things that are familiar. So the brain’s response to repetitive messages – even messages we know aren’t accurate – is, “I’ve seen this before. I don’t really have to pay close attention anymore.” We use the term “normalized” to describe the point at which we stop analyzing.

This is what happens when news and social media repeat President Trump’s tweets. He tweets once. His followers re-tweet, as do people who people want to express their objection. And then newscasts and newspapers include the tweet as part of their coverage. As linguist and advisor to Democrats, George Lakoff explains, journalists have been trained to repeat what officials say, and “What it does is keep the lies out there.”

Within a day or two, we’ve heard the message of the tweet dozens of times. The message has been “normalized.” We are so desensitized to it that things we once found outrageous don’t disturb us anymore and things we wildly cheered elicit little reaction. And that happens whether the repetition comes from people or sources we trust or from sources we typically dismiss.

Propagandists who attempt to create “big lies” rely on this pattern. The remedy? Get your brain in the habit of automatically testing every message for veracity, motive, and consequence.

• Familiarity. The more we know about a topic, the better we are at evaluating the veracity of what journalists say about it. The less we know, the more likely we are to believe a news story. Routinely asking basic media literacy questions can, to some degree, offset knowledge deficits. So can studying specific topics in greater depth.

The thing is, we learn more than who, what, when, where, and why from news reports. We also internalize a sense of what life is like in places that we’ve never visited or a sense of who people are even though we have never met them.

It is important to remember that news, by definition, does not report on the ordinary. It’s always a poor source for a portrait of typical daily life. Don’t rely on news for your conclusions about unfamiliar people or places. Doing so is more likely to lead you to embrace stereotypes than to develop a deeper understanding of life outside your direct purview.

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♦ Don’t believe everything you see.

When it comes to news, seeing shouldn’t necessarily be believing. Sometimes you’ll encounter a real photo or video, but the caption makes a false claim about what it shows. For example, a few years back there was a video circulating online purporting to show Muslims celebrating terrorist attacks on Paris. It turned out that the video was actually a 2009 clip of Pakistanis celebrating a cricket match victory. Unfortunately, such deceptions are not uncommon. So we remain ever skeptical.

If you want to verify before sharing, use a reverse image search to find and check the dates of other posts that include the photo. If your original story is “breaking news,” but there are previous uses of the photo, then you know someone is trying to mislead you. Treat everything posted by that source as if it is radioactive.

It’s much harder to identify photos or videos that have been digitally altered, but it is possible. You can submit photos to sites like fotoforensics.com, which differentiates between parts of a picture that were created at the same time and those that were likely added later. Reverse image search results also often include pictures that are similar to the one you are investigating. Sometimes you’ll find an original that makes it clear that your photo has been doctored (e.g., someone has been cropped out).

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♦ Pay attention to infographics.

Images can leave lasting impressions. People who share misleading graphs and charts rely on that. They distort the image even while presenting accurate numbers. So a quick glance at graphs or charts is never enough to be sure that your takeaway isn’t wrong.

Keep an eye out for an axis or bar that doesn’t start at zero (which distorts the relationships between bars and the trajectory of lines). Or look for a graph that’s flipped. Your eye assumes that a line going up represents an increase, but if the graph is upside down, it actually represents a decrease. So take a moment to look at what the numbers actually tell you, rather than just a quick glance at the bars or graph lines.

It can also be helpful to look for some context for the numbers. For example, an infographic might celebrate that in 2017 (President Trump’s first year in office), there were 2.06 million jobs created. Impressive, right? But there were 2.24 million jobs created the previous year. Now the accomplishment doesn’t seem so extraordinary.

Or imagine finding out that someone donated $1,000 to your favorite charity. That’s a sizable contribution, especially if you view it through the prism of your own salary and you earn, say, $50,000 annually. But how would your perception change if you discovered that it came from someone who earns $50,000 a day?

It’s handy to know a few basic numbers off the top of your head. One important figure is the nation’s total population. There are approximately 325 million people in the U.S. A petition with 3 million signatures sounds like it is huge, but it would represent less than 1% of people in the country. Context is important.

Consider making a list of other numbers worth memorizing. Base the list on the statistics that frequently appear in the news you follow. How about the total number of school-aged children? Or the living wage calculation for your community? Or annual budget numbers?
It can also be helpful to memorize a few key dates. Events that reconfigured the world, like World War II (1939-1945) can be important. I often find it helpful to know that Twitter’s very first tweet was sent in 2006, the iPhone was first made available to the public in 2007, and Facebook (which was opened to the general public in 2006) added its first news feeds in 2009.

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♦ Differentiate between satire sites and deceptive “news” sites.

If you’re in pursuit of facts, don’t rely on any site that intentionally distorts, misleads, or routinely mixes in a kernel of truth to lend credibility to largely fictional stories. That includes satire sites. At the same time, recognize that purpose matters. There are legitimate reasons to use and return to sites that post fake content for humor (like The Onion) or education (like the Dihydrogen Monoxide site). Somewhere on these sites, their intentions are always revealed.

In contrast, returning to sites that cloak their purposes, or that hide behind the “it was a joke” claim only after they’ve been called out for deception, is likely to increase confusion and line the pockets of people working to undermine the public interest. They often try to mimic credible sites hoping that you won’t be paying close attention. To state the obvious, using a familiar banner font doesn’t make a site credible. There are several lists of such nefarious “knock off” sites. You might consider blocking them. At a minimum, once a source has shared with you something deceptive, beware of everything else they post.

One caveat to this: Unintentional errors are not the same thing as deception. Journalists are human and sometimes they get things wrong. Ethical journalists admit their mistakes and print (or offer on-air) corrections.

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♦ Make friends with a fact-checking site.

No matter how sophisticated your media literacy skills, you will inevitably come across things that leave you wondering. In those cases, it’s helpful to look at how people who verify stories for a living evaluate credibility.

I still like Snopes.com because it tackles all sorts of information (including viral emails and urban legends), but there are several others. Factcheck.org and Politifact.com are also useful, especially for quick responses to current news.

Still, no site is perfect. Be sure you understand and are comfortable with the methods used by the fact-checking site(s) you choose.

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♦ Don’t substitute online tools for your own critical thinking.

Some news feed providers have responded to public pressure by providing quick tools to separate legitimate from fake. Twitter adds an icon to accounts that it has verified (i.e., the person is who they say they are). Facebook now tags questionable news stories as “disputed” and gives them lower priority in your news feed. The Washington Post offers a Chrome or Firefox extension that provides context to tweets from the President’s account.

Take advantage of all of these tools – and many more, but don’t let them replace your own critical thinking. Commercial and political entities operate in their own self-interest, not yours.

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♦ Think of yourself as a publisher.

This might be the most important tip of all. Deceptive news stories would have little impact if people didn’t share them. Before you “publish” something by passing it along, verify it. Imagine how different our community conversations would be if we approached fact-checking before sharing as our patriotic duty!

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If this all seems like an impossible burden, try to remember how it feels when you first use a new action-oriented video game. So many things to pay attention to all at the same time! But as you practice, you get better and it feels like the game gets easier. This will, too.

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1 “Brights” (or “high beams”), are a setting that increases the brightness and coverage of a vehicle’s headlights. They are typically used in very dark areas to improve visibility and sight distance. You might assume that they would be similarly effective in fog, but in fact, the light bounces off the moisture in the air and back at the source. So using your “brights” in fog actually makes visibility worse.

NEWS LITERACY STARTERS
Resource Recommendations – 2018

There are dozens of great news literacy resources and new ones are being generated all the time. This very short list is created for folks who want to find some basics but don’t have time to search through a full bibliography.

FOR TEACHERS

Prof. Joyce Valenza’s Blog
In this School Library Journal post, Valenza, an Assistant Professor of Teaching at Rutgers University School of Information and Communication, gathers concepts, vocabulary, and links to resources. A terrific starting place.

Craig Silverman’s Verification Handbook
This “how-to” for journalists covering breaking news, including case studies, provides teachers with a good feel for what people can/should reasonably expect from high quality journalism.

Project Look Sharp
Check the treasure trove of kits based on core curriculum areas to find news documents and media literacy strategies for analysis. Key news-related resources are accessible through a single button on the home page.

U.S. Media Literacy Week
Find local events and national resources connected with this annual national celebration/ observance organized by the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE).

Mind Over Media
A site created by the Media Education Lab to teach/learn about propaganda. The site can also be used by/with students.

Media Literacy in Every Classroom: An ASCD Quick Reference Guide
Written by media literacy education veterans Faith Rogow and Cyndy Scheibe, the QRG introduces powerful ways to use media literacy in virtually any K–12 classroom (including 48 activity ideas). This overview addresses recent concerns about the effects of media on democracy, public policy, and culture by outlining an inquiry-based approach that teaches students how to think without telling them what to think. You’ll find more than 50 years of combined media literacy education experience and wisdom condensed into just six pages, including key questions for teachers and students to ask when analyzing and creating media messages.

FOR STUDENTS

Key Questions to Ask When Analyzing or Making Media
Free, downloadable handout reminds students of the types of questions to ask.

News Bias Explored
Using real-life examples, takes students through issues like what’s included/omitted, word choice, framing, and more.

KQED’s Above the Noise
@kqedabovethenoise
Short videos explore a wide range of hot topics, taking viewers through the process of weighing evidence and making decisions.

Snopes
One of the original fact checking sites, Snopes tells you what parts of the story (or urban legend) are true, which are false, and which can’t be verified. When possible, they also indicate the origin of the myth.

CARS
Based on the work of Dr. Robert Harris, the CARS framework (credibility, accuracy, reasonableness, support) was designed to analyze websites, and it definitely leaves things out, but it’s a handy shortcut and a good springboard – master it first and then expand to more sophisticated analysis.

And if you absolutely feel compelled to provide students with lists of specific things to look for to spot deceptive news, ask them to compile and test strategies from these sites:

How to spot fake news
Factcheck.org

Fake or real: how to self check the news and get the facts
NPR.org

How to recognize a fake news story
Huffington Post

How to tell fake news from real news?
TED-ex blog, TED.com

May be reprinted for educational, non-profit use with the credit: From the edublog “TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., InsightersEducation.com 2018

What a Media Literacy Educator Hears When danah boyd Talks About Media Literacy

Posted on March 28, 2018 by medialiteracyeducationmaven

(a response to What Hath We Wrought? at SXSW)

For Starters…

So let me get this straight…boyd did some school observations and saw teachers who maybe had a workshop’s worth of prep on how to teach media literacy (because only a handful of teacher ed schools in the U.S. offer anything serious related to media literacy). They did an inadequate job of developing students’ inquiry skills, and that somehow makes media literacy responsible for Dylann Roof shooting up a Charleston church, the culture wars, and millions of people rejecting fact-based discourses? Really?

Boyd acknowledges that media literacy professionals are well intentioned, saying that we “imagine” that our work empowers and gives individuals agency and “the tools to help create a democratic society.” Maybe she thinks that this grudging nod offsets the rest of her argument, which suggests that we’re delusional and don’t understand our own work. Really? Spare me the condescension.

Boyd doubts the efficacy of media literacy because in scattered observations in high schools over the course of ten years she has seen “a perverted version of media literacy.” I’m not surprised that boyd has encountered questionable practice. Me, too. Contrary to boyd’s portrait, media literacy educators don’t have our heads in the sand. She isn’t pointing out anything we don’t already know. We are already profoundly aware that changes in digital technologies over the past decade have challenged educators, media, and the foundational cornerstones of democracy, and we haven’t yet figured out a comprehensive, effective response.

Unlike boyd, however, we don’t respond by intentionally misrepresenting media literacy, or blaming it, or arguing that we should dump the inquiry processes at its core. We adapt. When one strategy doesn’t work, we experiment with another (and another and another if needed). Because boyd’s existential crisis, while it is understandable, is a luxury that educators can’t afford. There are children in our classrooms today who need us right now.

Imagine if we applied boyd’s logic to reading: We’d point to ineffective teachers and note that literacy hasn’t cured all of society’s ills and then use those shortcomings to claim that reading has failed. Then we’d undermine the work of those who are trying to improve it by suggesting to a few hundred thousand people that maybe we should re-think our endorsement of reading as a strategy to strengthen democracy. Sounds ridiculous, right?

Provocateur or Troll?

Is it actually possible that boyd has only seen poor practice? It’s true that media literacy is still far from a universal presence in U.S. schools, but it stretches credulity to think that she has never encountered even one brilliant teacher who equips their students with exactly the skills, knowledge, and dispositions she seems to want. Has she seen no teachers who could serve as models for others? Really?

Either boyd doesn’t know enough about media literacy education to know what to look for (which may be the case since she gets the description of it so wrong – see below), or she’s visited the wrong schools, or she’s being less than forthcoming about her motives.

I have no idea what boyd’s motives are. I just know that she isn’t an ally. Because intentionally misrepresenting media literacy education isn’t the act of an ally. Ever. My critique of boyd isn’t because she is poking at my “sacred cow” (her label). Over the years I have been a vocal critic of central practices in the field. But there are ways to critique practice without delegitimizing the work of those under scrutiny. Boyd chose not to travel that path.

So I’m left wondering, of all the things she might address (the pedagogy of far more common education subjects like science, civics, and social studies or the shortcomings of media platforms or poor science reporting or corporations and governments that disseminate intentionally misleading information come to mind), why is danah boyd choosing to specifically troll the media literacy education community? On the playground we would see this as a mundane bully predictably picking the target least able to fight back. Who benefits when boyd undermines media literacy initiatives just now gaining serious traction in the U.S.?

What boyd Gets Wrong about Media Literacy

Oddly, boyd reduces media literacy to a superficial version of fact-checking and describes it as “fundamentally, a form of critical thinking that asks people to doubt what they see.” That makes her “nervous.” It would make me nervous, too – if that was what we actually did. It’s not.
Media literacy education doesn’t teach students to “doubt” what they see; it teaches students to interrogate what they see, and to do it routinely. We call it “inquiry.” That isn’t the same as doubting. And it’s not just a matter of semantics.

Doubt requires no intellectual effort. Inquiry requires evidence-based analysis, consideration of context and culture, making informed judgements about purpose and value (not to agree or disagree, but to understand), noticing voice (both amplified and silenced), and more.
Media literacy inquiry is not just about looking for flaws. It asks people to reach beyond all-or-nothing conclusions to identify strengths and weaknesses, accuracy as well as inaccuracy. It consciously promotes strong sense critical thinking, meaning that we interrogate the things that confirm our opinions as well as the things that challenge our views. We are after “rich readings,” not “single truths.”

In media literacy, identifying sources is a first step, not an end point of analysis. We require students to explain why a source is credible (or not) and how they know. We encourage them to reflect on how their own beliefs and experiences influence their conclusions about credibility.
We know that people don’t see things for which they have no language, so we teach concepts like “confirmation bias,” and “agenda-setting.” And we encourage awareness that has that has nothing to do with veracity or deception, like noticing why something is emotionally moving or seemingly important at one life stage and irrelevant at another.

When we assign students to become producers of media, we don’t just teach them how to write a lede or frame a shot; we require students to reflect on the potential impact of their choices. We facilitate student voice and, in the process, ask students to take themselves seriously enough to demand that they exercise that voice effectively and ethically.

There’s more, of course, but I won’t take the space here to repeat The Teacher’s Guide to Media Literacy or Media Literacy in Every Classroom. Instead I invite you to take a moment to notice the contrasts between what I’ve described and what boyd reports:

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boyd: “Students are asked to distinguish between CNN and Fox.”
authentic media lit ed: Students would be asked to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence of reports presented on CNN and Fox, applying the same analysis standards to both, including how the format and commercial interests of cable news shaped the stories. Students would also be asked to examine how other news outlets covered the same story and account for any differences.

boyd: “Or to identify bias in a news story.”
authentic media lit ed: “MLE teachers do not train students to ask IF there is a bias in a particular message (since all media messages are biased), but rather, WHAT the substance, source, and significance of a bias might be.” (NAMLE Core Principle 1.6)

boyd: “When tech is involved it often comes in the form of ‘don’t trust Wikipedia; use Google’”
authentic media lit ed: Censorship is incompatible with media literacy. No one would ask students to avoid a source (unless we’re intentionally avoiding things that would endanger students, like sites promoting suicide). Instead, students would be asked to use their inquiry skills to determine for themselves whether a source should be trusted, and for which subjects (because a source that is trustworthy on one topic is not necessarily the best place to go for every topic).

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You can see why boyd’s description is likely an accurate portrait of things she has seen, but it is a misrepresentation of the field. If, as boyd suggests, “the conversation around fact-checking has already devolved to suggest that there’s only one truth,” it is not because that conversation has been informed by media literacy.

Maybe boyd never read the “fine print” of NAMLE’s Core Principles, i.e., the “Implications for Practice.” Here are just a few tidbits that have provided guidance since the Principles were first published in 2007 (emphasis is mine):

1.5 MLE is not about replacing students’ perspectives with someone else’s.
3.1 MLE is not a “have it or not” competency, but rather, an ever evolving continuum of skills, knowledge, attitudes, and actions.
4.4 MLE invites and respects diverse points of view.
4.9 MLE is not partisan.
4.10 MLE is not a substitute for government regulation of media, nor is government regulation a substitute for MLE.
5.1 MLE integrates media texts that present diverse voices, perspectives, and communities.
5.6 MLE does not excuse media makers from their responsibility as members of the community to make a positive contribution and avoid doing harm.
6.1 MLE is not about teaching students what to think; it is about teaching them how they can arrive at informed choices that are most consistent with their own values.
6.2 MLE helps students become aware of and reflect on the meaning that they make of media messages, including how the meaning they make relates to their own lives.

Are these aspirational? Sure. But they’re also achievable. And some teachers do them quite regularly. Check out Project Look Sharp’s videos of constructivist media decoding if you want some examples. The ones on global warming and reading maps of Israel/Palestine are favorites.

I have to admit that I almost laughed out loud when I heard boyd’s suggestions for how we might modify media literacy. Implying that her ideas are somehow new or original (this was SXSW after all), she advises that we need to help “people understand their own psychology” and “that it’s important to help students truly appreciate epistemological differences. In other words, why do people from different worldviews interpret the same piece of content differently?” Really?

Has boyd seen Project Look Sharp’s Processes of Media Literacy graphic, which makes clear that Inquiry AND Reflection are at the core of everything we do?

Has she read any recent versions of the Key Questions for Analysis and Reflection? You know, the ones that include entire categories on Reflection and Context, and also Interpretation questions like:
– “How do prior experiences and beliefs shape my interpretation?”
– “What do I learn about myself from my interpretation or reaction?” and
– “How (and why) might different people interpret this differently?”
Boyd asserts that, “What’s common about the different approaches I’m suggesting is that they are designed to be cognitive strengthening exercises, to help students recognize their own fault lines, not the fault lines of the media landscape around them. I can imagine that this too could be called media literacy and if you want to bend your definition that way, I’ll accept it. But the key is to realize the humanity in ourselves and in others. We cannot and should not assert authority over epistemology, but we can encourage our students to be more aware of how interpretation is socially constructed. And to understand how that can be manipulated.” So first boyd misrepresents media literacy education, then she suggests solutions that we are already doing (like teaching social construction) and then has the temerity to suggest that “we can call it media literacy if we want to bend our definition.” Really??!!

Yes, we teach students to ask questions – because it is the best method we have for teaching them to think for themselves. And yes, we rely on an epistemology of reason – because it is what the designers of our democracy used when they separated church and state so that people with competing religious views could retain those views and still find enough common ground to create a nation.

I heartily agree with boyd that “ our information landscape is going to get more and more complex [and that] educators have a critical role to play in helping individuals and societies navigate what we encounter.” But when she says “the path forward isn’t about doubling down on what constitutes a fact or teaching people to assess sources,” she’s creating a false dichotomy. Reason matters. It may not be the only thing that matters, but it matters.

Epistemology questions aren’t new. There have always been and will always be different ways of “knowing the world” (as Mary Belenky, et al reminded us in Women’s Ways of Knowing, 1986). It is absolutely important to respect and understand all the ways of knowing that one’s students bring into the classroom. But some ways of thinking support democracy better than others and I won’t apologize for supporting a field that has chosen to put reason front and center.

Outcomes

Boyd’s naiveté is startling when she says, “Developing media making skills doesn’t guarantee that someone will use them for good.” Of course not. But why is that a flaw in media literacy? It’s true for every part of education. Complex factors go into human behavior; education, alone, can never guarantee behavior. We continue to teach students to write even though some will choose to pen racist or misogynist literature and we still teach kids to read even though it doesn’t guarantee that they’ll vote. When I look at boyd’s arguments and concerns through the lens of traditional literacy, her reasoning just falls apart. By itself, media literacy won’t solve the dilemmas created by deceptive news, competing epistemologies, or the multitude of complex changes that digital technologies bring to our lives. That might make it an incomplete strategy, but it doesn’t make it a failed strategy.

In the end boyd asks “What kind of media literacy makes sense?” She answers, “To be honest, I don’t know.” For a thought leader, boyd certainly demonstrates a lack of imagination. We know what to do, we just don’t have enough people doing it, and those who are doing it need more resources and support. So let’s get creative. Together. I’ll start. Here are half a dozen ideas that would help teachers get the skills, knowledge and experience they need to become spectacular media literacy educators:

The organizations that fund thought leaders could create a media literacy education think tank, so more people can evaluate and disseminate innovative and effective instructional practices.
Foundations could fund a cadre of media literacy coaches to work with the teachers who boyd sees as failing. That’s what some states did when they noticed that too many U.S. high school graduates couldn’t read or write well enough to meet workplace or college demands. They put reading coaches in every school – not for the students, but for the teachers. And guess what? Instruction improved.
Wealthy individuals or foundations could endow Media Literacy Professorships at Education Schools across the country, perhaps at the alma maters of inspirational teachers that they wish to honor. Endowed professorships is one of the strategies employed by the Koch brothers. Maybe we should follow their lead.
Universities could fund and host summer mini camps during which district teams are guided by media literacy specialists as they look for systemic ways to infuse media literacy throughout their K-12 school curriculum, so we aren’t relying on scattered one-off lessons to instill essential skills, knowledge, and dispositions. Participating schools could be paired with researchers who would track their efforts and with writers who would spread the word about their struggles and accomplishments.
danah boyd could ask every one of her Twitter followers to join NAMLE (it’s free!) so the organization can increase its clout enough to push for states to fund professional development opportunities for teachers.
We could challenge schools to re-examine why journalism is an elective. If Jeffersonian notions of an informed citizenry are essential to democracy and an independent press is a vital part of our system of checks and balances, then lets teach it in every grade and all subjects. Every student should have a chance to write news. Schools could be invited to share their teacher’s best lesson ideas or their students’ best work during National Media Literacy Week.

And while we’re at it, let’s call for every school text book publisher (both print and digital) to examine their existing titles and revise them in ways that integrate media literacy. And, to state the obvious, if you’re having conversations about media literacy education, be sure you have media literacy educators (not just journalists or theoreticians or critics) at the table. It’s not like we don’t have proven strategies for improvement out there. It’s just that no one has ever been willing to fund them at adequate levels in the U.S.

It is so much easier to point out what’s wrong and wonder why there are no easy (revenue-generating?) fixes. If the task seems insurmountable, talk to a principal who has led a team that transformed a troubled school into a source of community pride. Or a coach who has transformed a perennial losing team into a winner. Astonishing change is possible.

Moving Forward

I’m well aware that these aren’t the sorts of solutions that boyd is searching for. She is pondering far more philosophic questions. She wants to know how we adapt media literacy education to reach students in fundamentalist and other communities that eschew reason as a way to arrive at truth. Having more people engaged in teaching and researching media literacy would help. But mostly, I think it’s the wrong question. Would boyd suggest that we change scientific method because there are a substantial number of Americans, including in policy-making positions, who don’t believe that evolution is real? I hope not. Likewise, we shouldn’t change reason-based media literacy in a misguided attempt to reach people who would transform the United States from a democracy into a theocracy if we gave them a chance.

That said, media literacy education is used in far more diverse communities than boyd envisions. It’s embraced by the Catholic Church and public health practitioners, and though there have since been modifications, one of the first States to include a “viewing and representing” strand in their education standards was Texas! See Hobbs for even more examples. Media literacy as it exists now has substantial tools to engage people in difficult, deep, and respectful conversations. We do it all the time.

I learned two very powerful lessons from the gay rights movement that I think apply here. First, we can achieve phenomenal success without changing everyone’s minds. Second, the strategy that was most likely to change people’s sentiments from negative to positive was personally getting to know an LGBTQ person. We didn’t change who we were – we came out. Maybe the path forward for media literacy education is to involve more people in high quality learning experiences rather than fundamentally changing who we are.

Finally, I was particularly struck when boyd indicated that “Most media literacy proponents tell me that media literacy doesn’t exist in schools.” I was one of those proponents and I can say unequivocally that she heard us wrong. Media literacy exists in schools and is growing. What we actually said was that not enough schools have integrated media literacy instruction to blame media literacy for “backfiring” and causing our nation’s problems with “fake” news.

I raise this because one of the things that made It’s Complicated so important and brilliant was that boyd actually listened and gave voice to the teens she described. I am disappointed that she didn’t bother to give the same respect to media literacy educators. If she listened to us the way she listened to the teens represented in her book, I think she’d hear a very different story. Really.

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The opinions expressed here are entirely my own and do not necessarily represent any of the organizations I’ve mentioned. I strongly encourage people to read other responses to boyd, including those penned by Renee Hobbs and Benjamin Doxtador.

Comments welcome!

May be reprinted for educational, non-profit use with the credit: From the edublog “TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., InsightersEducation.com 2018

If Everyone Was Media Literate, Would Donald Trump Be President?

Posted on December 4, 2016 by medialiteracyeducationmaven

It’s tempting to fantasize. Who would be the President-elect if every viewer, listener, and reader had questioned media messages more deeply? Maybe there would have been a different winner. Then again, maybe not.

Human behavior is complex and often based on non-cognitive factors. No amount of education – even if it is excellent education – can change that. So I don’t know whether universal media literacy education would have changed the outcome of an election in which economic uncertainty, religious doctrine, and cultural constructions of manhood were major factors in ways that had nothing to do with media. What I do know is that it will be impossible for people on opposing sides to trust or respect one another – or trust that election results are a valid reflection of what the nation wants – until everyone is media literate.

The logic goes something like this: If I don’t trust the media you rely on, and I suspect that you accept without analysis the narrative offered by those media, then I don’t trust you either. And we know that fewer than one in five Americans trust national news organizations.

In practice, Donald Trump’s campaign to discredit mainstream media as “dishonest” and “rigged” is one of the things about him that scares me the most because it allows him to dismiss all criticism. His constant “believe me” refrain dares the public to choose between our President-Elect and the Fourth Estate. Mr. Trump doesn’t just ridicule media mistakes (which, admittedly occur far too often); he labels every report that questions his actions, popularity, veracity or ethics a lie, facts-be-damned. If he can convince the country to ignore media while also retaining single party control of all branches of government, that leaves no check on his power.

But let me be clear. This isn’t just about not trusting media. It’s about not trusting each other. If news accounts claim to be about people like me, but I don’t recognize myself in anything they say, I mistrust both the news sources and anyone who believes them. If you use Facebook to traffic in information that is demonstrably false, it’s hard to imagine ever trusting your judgment on anything. If I don’t think you value evidence or we can’t agree on what counts as credible evidence, dialogue is impossible. As President Obama noted in a November 17 press conference:

“If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, and particularly in an age of social media when so many people are getting their information in sound bites and off their phones, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.”

The election made clear that large segments of the American population view the world in seriously divergent ways. If we can’t find common ground based on shared values, facts are all we have left. If we can’t find ways to engage in fact-based exchanges of ideas about pressing issues that affect us all, we edge perilously close to that thin margin where the fabric of society begins to unravel.

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Check posts at Snopes.com before forwarding

The 2016 U.S. presidential contest fed media-motivated mistrust like cocaine feeds a crack addict. Fake news posts and tweets from widely discredited conspiracy theorists and white nationalists were shared (without critical comment) by thousands. Much of TV news was an epic fail and online sites were as likely to be dominated by partisan bloggers as by people adhering to professional standards of journalism (like fact checking or confirming that the sources they cite are real).

There were a few journalists who meticulously researched and documented their stories (David Farenthold’s work on the Trump Foundation comes to mind), but mostly news media contributed more to mistrust than to greater understanding. More than a few observers have noticed the problem and are calling for news media to do better. Like Bernie Sanders, many have questioned whether the handful of large media conglomerates that control most of our major news outlets can ever effectively fulfill the central (and essential) functions of journalism in our democracy to provide a check on power and to foster an informed citizenry.

I share concerns about a news ecosystem that structurally encourages superficial coverage and fake news, that allows celebrity to trump substance, that substitutes speculation for reporting, that relies on big data over local journalists on the ground, that normalizes misogyny, racism, and worse, and that measures success by ratings, clicks, or sales rather than by whether the public is well-informed. But no matter how much we succeed in efforts to reform media, as long as we treasure free speech, misleading information will always be a part of the mix.

That’s why the best hope for civil society to prevail against media-generated mistrust, anger, fear, and divisiveness is media literacy education. As NAMLE Executive Director, Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, suggested,

“The information avalanche is not coming to a stop any time soon. Media continue to be the loudest voices in our ears and in our children’s ears each and every day. As media literacy practitioners and advocates, we must get louder and fight harder for these essential skills to be taught in every classroom in every school in the U.S.”

She goes on to urge people to join NAMLE (it’s free) and get involved in the organization’s push for States to integrate media literacy into education requirements and teacher preparation programs. I concur.

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Simply put, media literacy education is vital to our path forward as a nation. But it can’t just be any version of media literacy education. Media literacy educators need to own up to fact that we’ve contributed to the mistrust eating away at our nation. We’re part of the problem. For us to become part of the solution, we need to acknowledge and eliminate the aspects of our practice that foster a willingness to dismiss legitimate news sources as fake and accept fringe sources as genuine.

SEVEN MEDIA LITERACY MISSTEPS

1. We talk about THE media or use the term “media” (erroneously) as a singular.

We rarely actually mean “all media” when we use “THE media” as a singular, but we nonetheless imply that there is some sort of unified conspiracy. It logically follows that if all media are working in consort, then once we expose mistakes by one, it’s easy to dismiss them all.

Sometimes we sound very much like Mr. Trump when he accuses “the media” of being “rigged” (though we might be more likely to use the term “biased”). Of course, he is exempting sources that he favors, like Drudge or Breitbart or Infowars, just like media literacy educators tend to exempt, without explicitly saying so, their favorite sources. For years I’ve urged critics of children’s television to stop overgeneralizing. They’d always reassure me that they didn’t mean Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood or Reading Rainbow, but their audiences didn’t know that. When critics said “children’s TV,” parents heard “all children’s TV.”

There are legitimate reasons that we sometimes lump diverse media together. It makes sense when we want to explain that the effects of media messages tend to be powerful only when they are cumulative and from multiple sources, or when we want students to understand the structures of commercial news and how those structures influence who is in the news room, the stories they choose, and the way they tell those stories.

But, in fact, not all media speak with one voice nor are all media commercial. Those that are, are competitors, often owned and run by people who don’t share interests and don’t like each other. And in the wake of a couple of decades of media consolidation, the same giant corporation can own media outlets that do very different things and are operated in very different ways. When we blend them together by using phrases like “the media is…”, we not only make it easier for people to accept conspiracy theories, we also misrepresent reality.

An Alternative: Stop accepting student work or using media criticism that:

issues blanket condemnations of all media
describes media patterns or structures as “conspiracies”
uses “media” as a singular noun and/or
relies on over-generalizations.

Help students think of phrases that might describe a topic more precisely, e.g., “corporate media culture” or “24/7 cable news” or “syndicated talk radio,” etc.

2. We only engage students in critiquing media we don’t like.

When we limit deep-dive classroom discussions to books, we leave students with the impression that it isn’t important to think about any other forms of media. Likewise, when we engage students in analysis only of media that we believe misrepresent the world, the message students receive is that as long as the media I’m looking at present the world as I see it, there’s no reason to bother with questioning. Now imagine how they handle a fake news story that shows up in their Facebook feed. As long as they agree with the perspective, why would they bother to ask if it’s fake or not?

An Alternative: Help students develop analysis skills as a habit that they apply to all media all the time. Provide opportunities to analyze media from a wide range of perspectives, genres, and formats.

3. We expose students to media critics without teaching them to analyze media for themselves.

I’ve learned a lot from media critics over the years and I want media literacy educators to continue connecting students to brilliant works of media criticism, from Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent to the social commentary featured in the impressive collection of films distributed by the Media Education Foundation. But just watching someone at their craft – no matter how great they are – doesn’t teach an observer how to do it.

I can watch Serena Williams win a hundred championships, but that won’t make me great a tennis player. If I’m already experienced and know what to look for, I may notice a technique or strategy that would improve my game, but even then, I’d still have to actually play if I wanted to master the necessary skills.

The same is true for media criticism. When we assign students to watch, read, or listen to media critics we may be hoping they’ll pick up critical inquiry and observation skills. But unless we pause to point out the critic’s methods and invite students to analyze the arguments, they won’t, especially if they are novices. They might gain some new insight, or replace their own judgement with the critic’s, but they won’t become independent thinkers capable of doing their own media criticism. And that’s a problem because there are lots of propagandists who spin convincing tales. If what we’ve modelled is how to accept, rather than engage with compelling arguments, we leave students vulnerable to being manipulated, even if the arguments they are learning to accept are spectacular.

An Alternative: Provide students with frequent opportunities to practice doing the work that it takes to analyze and critique media for themselves. And require them to apply media literacy analysis skills to the media critics you introduce.

4. We ask “Who made this and why?” and then stop.

We nearly always ask authorship and purpose questions of media messages because knowing origin and intention is key to analyzing meaning and veracity. The problem comes when we assume that maker and motive are the sum total of what one needs to know in order to make a determination about meaning or veracity.

So, for example, there are media literacy educators who teach students that advertising claims are never credible because they are created by people whose only goal is selling and those folks aren’t concerned with what’s actually in your best interest. Even when that’s true, it’s an interpretive shortcut we can’t afford because it means that students never actually develop the skills to investigate the claims.

We saw this exact skill gap play out over and over during the election, with Clinton supporters dismissing everything that came from the Trump campaign and vice versa, just because the source was their opponent, while accepting without question everything that came from their own political party. As a result, both sides missed information that would have helped them better understand what voters wanted and needed, and many voters accepted as accurate information from their own side that wasn’t.

An Alternative: Keep the focus on examining the evidence for claims before jumping to conclusions one way or another, no matter who crafted the message or their purpose. It would also help to

teach students to ask the same analytical questions of all media,
use the plural for questions about authorship and purpose so students understand that there are often multiple contributors and motives for any given message, and
follow up authorship or purpose questions with, “Why might it matter [to know this]?”

5. We imply that to be media literate one needs to pass an ideological litmus test.

As educators, it’s our responsibility to reject ideologies of hate that harm students and destroy society. With that exception, we have to be respectful of the widest possible range of views. We can’t model open inquiry and also demand that everyone become a ________ (fill in the blank: socialist, Christian, Libertarian, etc.).

This is really a question about requiring media literacy education for every student in every school just as we require traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic. If we are serious about reaching everyone, we need to acknowledge that our nation is diverse and deeply divided and be prepared to meet students where they’re at and with respect.

If we really want universal media literacy education, and we don’t want students (or their parents and teachers) to shut us out before we’ve started, we can’t urge students to reject capitalism even if we, personally, believe that capitalists use media to distort the culture to serve corporate ends. We can’t require students to be reborn as Christians because media value messages about sex or gender contradict our religious convictions. It’s natural to take inspiration from wherever we find it, but we can’t force everyone else to find inspiration in the same place. Indoctrination is not the same thing as education.

An Alternative: Rather than encouraging (either directly or implicitly) adherence to a religious or political ideology, focus on skills and dispositions. Teach students to identify the sources of their ideas, provide evidence and logical argument to back up their interpretations, and respect differing interpretations as long as they are reasonable and evidence-based. Require students to become effective, creative, reflective, and responsible communicators, even if what they end up saying challenges our own views. Encourage students to act on what they’ve learned, but don’t tell them what to do.

6. We frame the task as “Don’t be fooled.”

Ever wonder why traditional literacy is never framed as “We need to teach students to read and write so they won’t be fooled?” Yet, it’s common to hear media literacy educators justify their work with exactly that argument. We even say things to kids like, “Don’t be fooled by that toy ad – the actual toy is not that big.” Or, “Don’t be fooled by that cigarette or alcohol ad that makes it look like people who smoke or drink are healthy, active, and beautiful.” Imagine the likely student reactions to this framing:

You’re right. I’ve been fooled. So I must be a fool.
If my job is to make sure I’m not fooled by media, and it’s clear to me that I’m not very good at that yet, I’ll reject everything just to make sure I’m safe and won’t make any embarrassing mistakes.

Obviously it’s not good educational practice to make students feel dumb. When we tell students that they’ve been duped, they are less likely to hear “Don’t just accept media messages – question them,” than, “Don’t believe media messages because only fools believe them.”

An Alternative: Media literacy is not about instilling blanket disbelief, it’s about teaching discernment. We help students develop discernment skills by teaching them how to uncover meaning for themselves, not by interpreting media messages for them. We make them feel empowered by giving them tools, not by showing them that they’ve been fools.

7. We present power as a zero sum game.

I believe that proponents of critical literacy have it right when they insist on teaching students to examine the world in a way that reveals power relationships. It’s especially important to call attention to the role that media (and media owners) play in setting both personal and national agendas. But we have to be careful that in the process we don’t imply that media have all the power and individuals have none.

Students who see themselves as powerless against insurmountable media influence are likely to:

Become cynical rather than skeptical

Cynics stop asking questions – exactly the opposite of what we want. As the late journalist Gwen Ifill (z”l) observed, “cynics think they know the answers already, and then they stop listening. Skeptics always have more questions to ask, but we are willing to be persuaded to the honesty of an alternate point of view.” Media literacy education has to be about developing a nation of skeptics.

Withdraw rather than engage in civic life.

After all, what’s the point of engagement if I have no power? In fact, if I have no real power, isn’t my best bet to hand over control to a benevolent authority (and isn’t that exactly what’s been happening with the global rise of nationalism and the election of leaders like Donald Trump)?

An Alternative: Show students that they have a place in the power structure by engaging them in discussions about what does and doesn’t serve the public interest. Encourage them to become advocates for changes they’d like to see. Make sure they know about existing media initiatives that promote social justice. Create media making opportunities and demonstrate a genuine appreciation for student voices by facilitating the public sharing of the media they make.

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It is clear to me that media literacy proponents must demand better from journalists, social media sites, and our political leaders. We must also demand more from ourselves.

Despite our missteps, media literacy education holds great promise for helping the nation develop the kind of informed and engaged citizens so essential to democracy. As Michelle Lipkin reminds us, it is media literacy educators who believe that, regardless of political affiliation, “everyone needs to learn:

1) to distinguish between fact and fiction.
2) to be aware of the blurred line between entertainment and news.
3) to think critically about the avalanche of information we are receiving on a daily basis.”

If you’re looking for examples of media educators who avoid the missteps, check out the resources available from Project Look Sharp for studying presidential campaigns, war & peace, or environmental sustainability, or the Media Education Lab initiative on analyzing propaganda, or The Lamp’s approach to engaging students in video production.

Research confirms the potential of media literacy. A study released in November by Joseph Kahne and Benjamin Bowyer, Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age: Confronting the Challenges of Motivated Reasoning and Misinformation “found that political knowledge did not improve judgments of accuracy but that media literacy education did.”

Because media literacy education is based, in part, on the premise that everyone interprets media through the lens of their own experience, media literacy educators welcome diverse voices and interpretations. The focus is on evidence and reason, not adherence to a predetermined party line. If media literacy education has an ideology, it’s a devotion to strong sense critical thinking, creative inquiry, and open-mindedness. When we avoid the missteps, media literacy classrooms are models for the type of dialogue that keeps democracy healthy.

In my vision of a media-literate nation there isn’t political uniformity. Disagreements over values and strategies mean that people will continue to vote for diverse range of parties and candidates. That’s what is supposed to happen in a democracy. But everyone will be able to trust that opponents are well-informed and understand what’s at stake. Disagreements won’t dissolve into demonizing. And when elections are over, we will find common ground and work together to make the nation a better place. We’re not there right now, but we can get there.

Every day I’m inspired by colleagues who are teaching media literacy and transforming lives in the process. In our 1984ish world, there are challenges ahead. We’re up to them. Let’s get to work.

May be reprinted for educational, non-profit use with the credit: From the edublog “TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., InsightersEducation.com 2016

Examining White Nationalism: Curriculum-Integrated Media Literacy

Posted on November 16, 2016 by medialiteracyeducationmaven

In future history books, one of the notable features of the U.S. presidential election of 2016 will be the rise of white nationalism in the U.S., including the appointment of Steve Bannon – the person who claims to have created the most popular online platform for sharing white nationalist ideas – to a powerful senior position in the Trump White House. To help students understand these events, schools would do well to renew a commitment to teaching about modern history’s most influential white nationalist movement, the Nazis.

Nazi history is exceptionally important today because the party’s rise from a white nationalist, anti-Semitic, racist fringe group to a world-class military power that almost succeeded in imposing it’s genocidal dictatorship across the globe remains the primary foundation and inspiration for current white supremacists in Europe and the U.S. It’s not enough to teach that Nazi Germany existed and was our enemy in WWII; we have to help students identify the factors that gave rise to one of the most destructive ideologies in human history.

It is fortuitous, if coincidental, that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is engaged in a project that could help students examine the Nazi rise to power while also engaging in media literacy analysis. History Unfolded, a crowdsourcing project by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is inviting the public to help crowdsource an answer to questions about what Americans knew about Nazi violence or intentions and when they knew it. Scholars have already examined coverage of events in major newspapers and newsreels, but no one has ever looked at what would have been seen by people who got their news from small town papers in the 1930s and 1940s. So the museum is asking the public to comb through libraries to find local newspaper articles, political cartoons, and letters to the editors. The results will be uploaded to a searchable database and some may be included in the Museum’s 2018 exhibit on America’s response to the Holocaust.

Several educators and historians involved in the project have pointed out that, in addition to the benefit of students doing real-world investigation, the project provides ample opportunity for students to learn about their own community.

What did people in your community know about the event?
What do the newspapers tell us about how local and national leaders and community members reacted to news about the event?
What did you learn about the relationship between the rise of the Nazis and what was going on in your community?
What did you learn about the Nazis or WWII that might be relevant to understanding current events?

There are also a wide range of natural media literacy analysis questions:

Where does the story appear (what page) and how much column space was devoted to the topic? What do these factors tell you about the story’s importance to your community?
What were the sources of information? Was the reporter on scene or conveying information shared by others?
What questions did the reporter ask? What questions might they have asked that they didn’t?
Was the information accurate? If not, what do you think accounts for the errors?
How was the story framed? What was the primary message? Did the piece rely on or include any stereotypes?
What role did AP or other newswire sources play? Did the local paper reprint a wire source or do it’s own reporting? Is there a local angle?
How many news sources were widely available in your community in the 1930s? How did coverage of the Nazis in the source you are looking at compare to other local sources? How did it compare to major national sources?

And though it’s not the focus of the project, it would be easy to spend just a little bit of class time contemplating how the media literacy lessons might be applied to modern media:

What role do wire services play today?
Newspaper editors determined which stories made the front page. Who determines what shows up in the news feeds on Facebook or other social media platforms?
How do reporters today gather information? How does the widespread availability of Internet or wifi enabled phones with cameras change the nature or credibility of journalism?
How does news coverage influence the way we think about groups of people with whom we may not have much personal contact? How does the existence of “comments” sections at the end of news stories, or links to Twitter threads influence our ideas?
How does news coverage influence a nation’s willingness to go to war?

Happy Media Literacy Week!

Posted on October 31, 2016 by medialiteracyeducationmaven

Oct 31 – Nov 4, 2016

It’s Media Literacy Week! Take the media literacy pledge: I pledge to think critically about the media I consume and create. http://woobox.com/56mwyp/i2hq7c

After you’ve taken the pledge, check out a week of amazing events and resources, including not-to-be-missed webinars from Project Look Sharp (Nov 1 on teaching Presidential Campaigns), Facing History and the News Literacy Project (Nov 3 on news literacy and implicit bias), and the Media Education Lab (on teaching about propaganda). And there’s so much more. If you’re in St. Louis, join me for a workshop for early childhood professionals on Nov 4 or for parents on Nov 5. Contact the Gateway Media Literacy Partners for details (www.gmlpstl.org).

Halloween Tip

Halloween is a great time to introduce an important media literacy vocabulary word: “costume.” Help children gain an awareness of how media are constructed by pointing out that they aren’t the only ones who put on costumes. Except for people in news stories, nearly everyone on TV and in movies is also wearing a costume, even when they look like “regular” people. For kids in early elementary grades, you might also talk about the difference between “costumes” (clothes that people wear when they are pretending to be someone else) and “uniforms” (special clothes that some people wear for work).

If your kids have favorite TV programs that feature actual humans (as opposed to animation), you might also search for videos that take viewers behind the scenes, including into the wardrobe department. Here are a few examples:

Stuck in the Middle KC Undercover Supergirl

Keep in mind that these are posted by people trying to entice potential viewers to watch the show and that YouTube has ads and links to other videos. These are based, in part, on your past browsing history and may not be appropriate for young children. Supervise accordingly.

Rigged Media? Some Quick Thoughts

Presidential candidate Donald Trump has spent a lot of time at campaign events claiming that journalists are conspiring against him. There are lots of reason to criticize news media in the U.S. – more on that in future posts – but the notion that journalists are “bad people” and “liars,” especially without citing any evidence, is exceptionally damaging to the prospect of creating a media literate America (not to mention the future of democracy!). Instead of encouraging people to think critically about news media, Trump is asking people to reject the possibility that any news story might have merit (unless, of course, the report confirms his narrative of the world). So here are a few thoughts for those who are attracted to the notion of news media conspiracies:

The major news media are competitors, and if they seem like an echo chamber, it’s because they are all based on the same commercial revenue generation model rather than service to the public interest. That’s not the same thing as a conspiracy.
The word “media” is a plural noun, and using its correct form is an important reminder of it’s diversity. If you must generalize, it’s “Media are…”, not “THE media is…”
Real journalists fact check. So when you cite reports from conspiracy theorists (like Alex Jones) or activists who have a track record of intentionally distorting video to create false stories (like the misleadingly named Project Veritas), you can’t then complain when credible journalists don’t repeat what you say. It’s not because they are biased against you; it’s because they value facts and evidence.
The Trump campaign has used the sparsity of reports on Bill Clinton’s sexual misbehavior and the seemingly insatiable focus on his own sexual conduct as evidence that media are biased against him. To those folks I offer this reminder: See that word “new” in “news”? There’s a reason that K-8 teachers call teaching about the news “current events.” Reporting on twenty year old accusations isn’t what journalists do, unless something new related to the story comes up. So of course they aren’t spending a lot of time covering (again) Bill Clinton’s sexual improprieties from the eighties and nineties but they are covering each new accusation against Mr. Trump. And by the way, cheap stunts, no matter how creative or obnoxious, don’t make old stories new again.

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE! : )

♦ Ask relevant questions and ask them ROUTINELY.

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♦ Use common sense.

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♦ Check multiple sources from diverse perspectives.

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♦ Instead of “balance,” look for fair, accurate, inclusive and thorough reporting.

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♦ Focus on the evidence, not the “bias” of the reporter.

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♦ Look for “independently verified” reports.

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♦ Consider your source’s sources.

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♦ Don’t confuse sender with source.

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♦ Be aware of how media content is influenced by revenue structures.

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♦ Accept that you are human.

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♦ Don’t believe everything you see.

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♦ Pay attention to infographics.

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♦ Differentiate between satire sites and deceptive “news” sites.

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♦ Make friends with a fact-checking site.

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♦ Don’t substitute online tools for your own critical thinking.

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♦ Think of yourself as a publisher.

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NEWS LITERACY STARTERS Resource Recommendations – 2018

FOR TEACHERS

FOR STUDENTS

May be reprinted for educational, non-profit use with the credit: From the edublog “TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., InsightersEducation.com 2018

(a response to What Hath We Wrought? at SXSW)

For Starters…

Provocateur or Troll?

What boyd Gets Wrong about Media Literacy

Outcomes

Moving Forward

May be reprinted for educational, non-profit use with the credit: From the edublog “TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., InsightersEducation.com 2018

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NEWS LITERACY STARTERS
Resource Recommendations – 2018