Position Paper 3 | Digital and Media Literacy

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Articles, advertisements, podcasts, and social media posts are globally credited of high reliability and quality simply because of its easy access. Because of this, individuals in any country with access to media are susceptible to consuming misinformation and disinformation. Nationwide organizations are taking active measures to provide media and digital literacy opportunities for all ages--to ensure that we as a unity are being strategic about how we interpret and accurately analyze media from online outlets. 

Media Literacy

Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication. Basically, media literacy builds upon traditional literacy (like simple reading and writing skills) and offers newforms of reading and writing. If attempted and executed properly, media literacy has the potential to empower individuals to be critical thinkers and makers, effective communicators, and active citizens. These are strengths that are typically assumed to be associated with workers in the communications, marketing, digital, and corporate fields mostly, but everyone should have proper knowledge on how to navigate through a globally dominate system. 

Lateral Reading 

 (CNN) - Media literacy is more than spotting fake news. How one librarian gives teens the tools to decide what to trust.

Though not a national legislative requirement in public schools, some institutions are ensuring that a media literacy course takes priority in the K-12 curriculum. In January of 2024, CNN published an article and short video interviewing librarian, Lisa Manganello from South Brunswick High School, on how she made it a priority to teach her students how to properly analyze the very confusing landscape of online media. In the video, Manganello explains her use of lateral reading incorporated in the digital literacy lesson. News Literacy Project describes lateral reading as an exercise that helps you determine the publisher's credibility, intent, and biases by asking and answering fact-checking questions, which mirrors with Manganello's description and how she uses this exercise with her students.

She asks the students to acknowledge what words in a headline of an article stand out the most and to decide if it is bias to a specific side and whether or not it is trustworthy because of that. "Is the article neutral?" "Are the words flattering or unflattering?" What does that say about this article? Manganello explained to CNN, " Whatever article you're choosing, I want you to be able to look at it from a critical lens and really make a decision about whether or not this is a trustworthy article."

Media Literacy now published a map that shows the steps few states have taken towards including media literacy education reform through the legislative process only. This was last updated May 2024. 

Video Lectures and Crash Courses with Evaluation Techniques

Crash courses and video lectures are more digital literacy resources, mostly specified for the K-12 age group. These videos can be suitable for individual learning at home or a leading topic in a lesson plan. The video above was created and published by John Spencer, a former middle school teacher and current college professor. His videos are created with the idea of igniting creativity in every classroom. This video discusses the five C's of critically consuming. These are the five C's students can evaluate when detecting if a certain news is real or fake and Spener's elaborations: 

• #1: Context - Look at the context of the article. When was it written? Where does it come from? Have events changed since then? 
• #2: Credibility - Check the credibility of the source. Does the site have a reputation for journalistic integrity? Does the author cite credible sources? Or is it satirical?
• #3: Construction - Analyze the construction of the article. What is the bias? Are there any loaded words? Any propaganda techniques? Any omissions that you should look out for? Can you distinguish between the facts and opinions?
• #4: Corroboration - Corroborate the information with other credible news sources. Make sure it's not the only source making the claim. If it is, there's a good chance it's actually not true. 
• #5: Compare - Compare it to other news sources to get different perspectives. Find other credible sources from other areas of the ideological or political spectrum to provide nuance and get a bigger picture of what's actually happening. 

There are many other digital literacy content creators that publish videos training youth on how to evaluate and determine the credibility of the information they're being given. 

Media Program Resources for Adults

While some schools are making way for young children and teenagers to develop a better understanding of media analysis, there are other organizations encouraging efficacious media literacy training for adults. Action.everylibaray.org is an organization that pushes libraries to provide digital informative resources for the adult-age group. Bringing light to the increasing proliferation of misinformation and disinformation, these resources would also be accommodable for elders not as comfortable using online media outlets.

Fortunately, some libraries have started providing media literacy training courses for adults that involve workshops and classes that discuss the importance of detecting biased and dangerously misleading information online. 

The News Literacy Project is a nonpartistan media literacy program that collaborates with libraries and other organizations to provide successful educational resources for training in media literacy. The News Literacy Project created a program that offers interactive courses that teach adults how to navigate through sources, recognize propaganda, and comprehend the landscape of the news industry. This program is an active resource in multiple libraries all over the country. 

NewsGuard is a powerful media literacy tool for citizens, librarians, educators, and students. NewsGuard is a program with extensive media literacy resources. Over 800 public libraries are partnered with NewsGuard and offer NewsGuard's browser extension to patrons. Even educators worldwide utilize NewsGuard's extension to help students develop a more quality understanding of digital literacy. 

Media literacy is vital in global education. Media literacy is to ensure that individuals, both young and old, can determine if information is factually true or biased and disinformation. The organizations, programs, and former/current educators listed above are all set on developing the national and global percentages of the digital literacy rates.