Much of our conversation last night either directly or indirectly related to news literacy. The problem is, there's a paradox inherent in news literacy: most people who would benefit from becoming news literate are unaware of news literacy, and also unaware that they're in need of it.
I know a guy; let's call him Conspiracy Theorist for the purposes of this public blog. Among many other wacky encounters, I recently sat through a ten-minute lecture from him about how ebola had become airborne. He was absolutely convinced that this disease would be the end of society as we know it--80-90% of the United States would perish, and the military would take over. A friend and I patiently tried to explain to him that ebola is not an airborne virus. I even showed him an article from a prominent microbiologist explaining that ebola has a very small chance of ever becoming airborne. He replied with an article from some crazy alternative news source, the main page of which contained articles about UFOs and other phenomena.
Conspiracy Theorist seems like a normal guy when you first meet him. But he's in dire need of news literacy. The problem is, he doesn't know that he needs it. Further, you could never convince him of this because he constantly references articles and information from these same news sources to prove his points. It's circular reasoning at its very finest.
What solutions are there to these issues? What if news literacy were embedded in college (or even high school) general education curricula? What if news sources took it upon themselves to encourage audiences to verify information and search out bias? Both of these solutions seem unlikely to happen. Even if we pursued these solutions, it's difficult to teach people about something they don't think they need. For now, I'll do my part by being news literate and teaching news literacy to my students.
Excellent point, Peter. Indeed, how do we teach people something they don't think they need? I understand how we as educators can teach media literacy to our students; they're a captive audience. But how would journalists go about teaching media literacy to audiences? What would that look like? Op Ed articles in support of it? Greater transparency in how we report, sure, but what would that transparency look like? Info-Graphic boxes to go with every story that shows how we sourced and authenticated information? Red lines leading from every WWWWW/H fact in the story to a call-out box with further context and explanation on why it was included in the first place? Would people read that-- and would it be enough to convince those who need convincing the most? As you point out, Conspiracy Theorist -- and others like him -- see it as propaganda and they have no shortage of reference articles and wackadoo pundits to support their own misguided schools of thought.
ReplyDeleteYou're right to wonder how much of our attempts at transparency the audience would read. It's a fine line. Maybe journalists' complete notes and transcripts, when appropriate, could be published on a paper's website, for example. They could create a database for those who want to dig deeper.
ReplyDeleteBut, of course, the bad journalists and outlets wouldn't follow those standards or would just use illogical means to justify their writing, thinking, and decision-making process.
ReplyDeleteI made acquaintance this summer in Arkansas with a fellow amateur photographer, and he posts all of these conspiracy theories and religious and political rants on Facebook. It's entertaining to see what's next but scary to see how many people agree with him by their comments and "likes."