News media Literacy is something that has grown near and dear to my heart. After watching the people closest to me get sucked into fake news, alternative facts, misinformation, and disinformation, I knew I had made the right move to become a librarian so that I could help educate people on how to become better stewards of information.
Information Literacy, technology, and digital media are all intertwined. Whether good or bad, there are lots of people out there gathering information using only technology and digital media. 
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Information Literacy is one's ability to identify, find, evaluate, and use information effectively. Back in the "old days", an information seeker would grab their favorite spiral notebook and head to the library. They would shuffle through the card catalog and jot down some numbers and letters. Those numbers and letters would lead them to the books which contained the information they were searching for. After they thumbed through the books or microfilm and gathered their notes, they would return the items to the front desk to be reshelved. Information was also gathered from newspapers, magazines, and a hand full of televised news outlets.
Fast forward a few years.....
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Thanks to digital card catalogs, computers, and smartphones, searching for information has become much easier. Gone are the big bulky card catalog systems and information limited to within the library walls. Technology has been full speed ahead for many years. It has completely changed the way people search for information. Now, patrons can search for information from their own homes.
This is where it gets tricky!
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Digital Media is any information presented through a screen. This includes texts, audio, video, and graphics accessible through the internet. It is amazing to think about the abundance of information right at our fingertips! We bypass libraries, card catalogs, and books to get the answers that we are searching for.
What on earth could be wrong with that?
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Enter FAKE NEWS......
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Fake news is not a new problem. We have always had fake news. The problem is, now we have platforms that can reach millions of people in seconds!! The next problem is the fact that a large number of people lack the appropriate skills to be responsible information consumers. Information authority is given out like flyers in a Walmart parking lot.
What in the world can we do??
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Teachers and librarians have to teach people how to be good stewards of information. Students (and adults) need to acquire the skills that will help them evaluate information that they come across on a daily basis. The article from this week's readings called "Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a "post-truth" world" really hits the nail on the head! I could fill this entire blog full of quotes from this article. The article outlines the news literacy problem. "News literacy is complicated. In our attempts to discern truth, we are confronted by a 24/7 news cycle. News hits us across media platforms and landscape populated by degrees of professional journalists and citizen journalist and satirists and hoaxers and folks paid or personally moved to write intentionally fake news" (Valenza, 2019). It goes on to outline ways that we can become more news media literate.
My information diet.....
I am ashamed to say that my information diet was once not very healthy. I was guilty of scrolling through social media to find out the latest happenings. Daily weather reports, local power outages, lost pets, and traffic updates were my main news intake for the day. I won't mention the daily post about what Aunt Sally had for dinner or the other complaints that were mixed into my feed. Over time, the theme of these social media posts started to take on a much more outlandish tone. Political parties bashing each other, conspiracy theories, and the constant arguing made me stop and think. This is when I decided to really analyze what kind of information I was putting into my brain.
First I learned that ANYONE can create a meme!! WOW! You just take a picture and slap words on it and... BOOM... People believe it! It's like magic!! Next, I started to pay attention to the news reports that people were sharing on social media. I never know that we had so many news outlets. I quickly realized that websites are easy to create and anyone can write a "news story" and pass it off as legitimate journalism. Finally, I started talking to friends and family about the importance of fact-checking information. I think I got on some people's nerves when I would constantly ask if they had considered the source when digesting information!
What really turned my information diet around wasthe research that I conducted for my research proposal on news media literacy. I really got to dig into why people fall for all kinds of fake news and misinformation. I started to understand why people share stories that have no evidence to back it up. Now that I am more information literate myself, I try to do a better job of finding information from credible sources, indetifiying new bias, and carefully giving authority to people and sources that are educated about the subject.
The perfect librarian's information diet...
I feel like the perfect information diet for a librarian would be full of peer reviewed publications, reputable news sources, and lots of cross checking information. Just as this weeks podcast stated, we know that news outlets are bias, or at least leaning to one side of information. As long as the consumer is aware of this, and knows to look further into the informaiton presented, then it is okay to consume bias news. Librarians are, or should be, responsible consumers of information who are on a mission to educate people on how to be independent and effective seekers of reliable information.
Resources
Image 1. Britannica Digital Learning. https://britannicalearn.com/blog/what-do-you-mean-information-literacy/
Image 2. UChealth Today. https://www.uchealth.org/today/the-hidden-stress-of-cell-phones/
Image 3. Digital Media. https://www.thinglink.com/scene/850408502345072640
Image 4. Getting to Lean. http://gettingtolean.com/toyota-principle-5-build-culture-stopping-fix/#.YTDVUS2cY6U
Image 5. Texas State University. https://www.txstate.edu/commonexperience/pastsitearchives/2019-2020/stories/blog/2020-03-30-truth-about-fake-news.html
Image 6. Fact Checking and Verification. https://gijn.org/fact-checking-verification/
Valenza, Joyce. (2019). Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a "post-truth" world. School Library Journal. November 26, 2016.https://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2016/11/26/truth- truthiness-triangulation-and-the-librarian-way-a-news-literacy-toolkit-for-a-post-truth-world/
Hello, Crystal! You do a fantastic job of defining digital literacy and explaining the need for vigilance and clear lessons outlining how to differentiate between fake news and fact. Your mention of the ease with which people share false information triggered a memory for me. I have a toddler who is a huge fan of avocados. One afternoon, I received a message through Facebook Messenger from my mother. It was a link to an article reporting that avocados were being found to have salmonella. Bummed by the prospect and incredibly sceptical, I read the entire article. Turns out, the article simply outlined the importance of washing avocados before you cut them open. It blew me away that such a strong statement was make in the title, and then the article presented information encouraging a simple behavior. While I was curious about the validity, I know others saw the title and took it as absolute fact without reading further. I agree that this is a pressing issue in the midst of this digital era.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your thoughts!
Josie Price
Oh, the deceptive headline!!! I get so many calls from family letting me know stuff like the avocado bacteria. I sometimes feel bad constantly correcting misinformation.
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ReplyDeleteAs I read your comments, I couldn't help but think about many news sources I have listened to or watched over the last several months. It becomes very difficult to know who is telling the truth. In spite of finding information that is peer reviewed or has other credentials, the information is presented or published by individuals that have a bias. i do not believe it is possible to separate opinions from facts that are being presented to the publc as the truth. I appreciate the graphics used. These visuals definitely added to your presentation.
ReplyDeleteI do think that separating fact from opinion is very difficult. I don't think that opinions are always negative. The dangerous part about opinions is the authority that we assign to those opinions.
ReplyDeleteI see so many people listening to claims made by those who have no knowledge base to actually form an educated opinion. Like they say, "everyone is instantly an expert when they read memes on social media".