Blog Post 2: Musings of "Truth" in Social Media and Digital Literacies Today
With it being an election
year and everything going on with COVID-19, I have found myself thinking a
great deal about “truth” and the way information and facts are presented to the
public. As I am sure many others can attest to, I have found Facebook to be a
placed filled with friends or acquaintances from past lives sharing posts about
conspiracy theories, the illuminati, and how the government is actively trying
to control everything in our lives. In many cases, Facebook friends will
mistake satire sites like “The Onion” as truth and share it. However, there are
others who seem to follow the typical steps of research, yet say they do not trust
mainstream media or what society accredits as “credible sources” because they
are part of the hidden agenda as well. For example, many have said that Jeffrey
Epstein’s arrest is connected to Pizzagate. Though Pizzagate was debunked
numerous times by numerous fact checking and political media outlets since its
creation in 2016, some claim that it is all part of the overarching cover up of
media control in our country. Additionally, I have found it interesting that
when one piece of what is being shared on Facebook is considered to be “true,”
then people use that validation to believe the rest of the information must be
true as well. In Clay Johnson’s interview of Gunger’s podcast “Fake News and
Media Literacy,” he discusses this because often people will look past
misinformation if they find that an article or piece of media aligns with their
views (Gunger, 2017).
Though I will confess that I
have gone down a number a Facebook rabbit holes myself, the concept of truth
and the connection between shared media and our new digital age fascinates me
because so much looks like it can be accurate these days. The concept of “post-truth”
is crucial today’s perception of in digital media because the advertisements and
article clicks are what make companies money (Venoza, 2016). Ensuring that
their articles and/or article titles are filled with adjectives and pathos will
entice more people to click on articles, which will in turn make companies more
money. Post-truth essentially helps people further the beliefs they already
have, rather than challenging concepts they may agree with.
I also think it is very
interesting the Johnson discusses how major news conglomerates are held to a
standard and can suffer greatly if they share information that is false, but
that there is not a true safety net like this for the internet. Over the past
year as I have been making observations about the various types of information
found on social media, I have also been thinking about how the political
climate has been so polarized since social media has become a major part of how
patrons receive information. Since Facebook has started to get political in the
2010s, people feel the need to be all for something and essentially cyberbully
people with opposing views. Therefore, I believe that along with the
misinformation that is being presented on Facebook, this idea of “clicking
courage” where confrontation is not face to face anymore also plays a major
part in the confidence people have in sharing misinformation. People have
become so much more comfortable getting into arguments over the internet and
will say things through social media they would normally never say to a person’s
face. I believe this stems from people
finding more and more “information” that backs their beliefs and therefore
feeling more validated by their argument, rather than checking the information they
are sharing. Before interacting with this week’s readings, I had never heard of
the term “truthiness” before, but I think it is such an important concept in
today’s world. So many people read information and articles through the lens
and biases they already have; therefore, they will believe information based on
“truthiness” instead of investigating what is actually true (Volenza, 2016). If
an article has characteristics that seem like they could be true and make sense
to the reader, they must be fact.
Though
digital media is not normally held to the standard that global news
conglomerates are held to, that makes the job of librarians so much more
important today. As librarians, we have to ensure that resources for fact
checking and being able to identify credible news sources are readily available
and widespread for users. According to the Framework of 21st Century
Learning, we have to give students the capability and tools to work with
multi-modal print and digital literacies.
21st century learners must know how to engage, analyze, and communicate with others about literacy over various platforms. To do this, understanding different technology platforms and actively looking for ways to analyze resources for accuracy is imperative. Furthermore, it is vital that librarians are giving 21st century learners the tools to understand credibility and be able to identify characteristics of reliable news articles (Partnership for 21st Century Learning, 2015). Johnson gives many points of references and characteristics that he looks for when reviewing the reliability of articles. These include: naming an author, naming a publisher and then researching that publisher, date of publication, looking for other cited resources within the article, being weary and challenging studies and statistics discussed within the article, looking for grammar mistakes, and looking for language or punctuation that is meant to influence the opinion of the reader (Gunger, 2017). Of all of the tips Johnson discusses, I think his best tip is to ensure that users are challenging articles they agree with even more than articles they disagree with because it is so natural for humans to agree with look past misinformation if they want to believe the information is true.
Because all of this can be
daunting to students, I think it’s important to think of things in practical
ways first. When listening to Johnson podcasts this week, I kept thinking back
on so many of the easy-to-use examples Spiering discusses in “Adolescent
Literacies with the Standards” (2019). For example, Spiering discusses using
social media posts to help students practice analyzing articles for bias,
purpose, and accuracy. By giving students practice with smaller social media
posts first, they will be able to put that same analysis into practice with
articles as well. It’s important to relate to students in ways that seem most
relevant to them to show them how important analysis can be in regards to the information
they are consuming. Altogether, it is the school librarians job to not only
give student the tools to analyze various forms of digital information
literacies, but to show them why it’s so important and how it relates to them.
References:
Gungor, M. (Host). (2017,
March 7). Fake news and media literacy. [Audio podcast
episode]. In The Liturgists. https://theliturgists.com/podcast/2017/3/7/fake-news-media-literacy
Partnership for 21st Century Learning. (2015). Framework for 21st century
learning
definitions. Retrieved
from https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.s3.amazonaws.com/5dd6acf5e22a7/11824564?response-cache-control=private%2C%20max-age%3D21600&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27P21_Framework_Definitions_New_Logo_2015.pdf&response-content-type=application%2Fpdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20200913T120000Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=21600&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAZH6WM4PL5SJBSTP6%2F20200913%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=c5316fafa0dd5118f3118f56d4a967c2be6fbdd528c37a2b21c72d21b9ed90bd
Partnership for 21st Century Learning. (2015). Framework for 21st century
learning
definitions. [Image].Retrieved from https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.s3.amazonaws.com/5dd6acf5e22a7/11824564?response-cache-control=private%2C%20max-age%3D21600&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27P21_Framework_Definitions_New_Logo_2015.pdf&response-content-type=application%2Fpdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20200913T120000Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=21600&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAZH6WM4PL5SJBSTP6%2F20200913%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=c5316fafa0dd5118f3118f56d4a967c2be6fbdd528c37a2b21c72d21b9ed90bd
Redwhale.
(2019). How to survive in a post-truth world — avoid this devastating
obstacle. [Image]. Retrieved from https://startupsventurecapital.com/how-to-survive-in-a-post-truth-world-avoid-this-devastating-obstacle-caf43f016319
Spiering,
J. (2019). Adolescent literacies with the standards. Knowledge Quest, Volume
47(5). pp. 44-47
Valenza, J. (2016). Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A
news literacy toolkit for a “post-
truth” world. School Library
Journal. [Web page] Retrieved from http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2016/11/26/truth-truthiness-triangulation-and-the-librarian-way-a-news-literacy-toolkit-for-a-post-truth-world/Johnson
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