Making it easy to apply Media Literacy guidelines every day
Media Literacy Week in the U.S. is Nov 5–9, 2018 and hundreds of educators are sharing guidelines to help people better evaluate the media they’re consuming. At OwlFactor we agree that improving people’s critical thinking skills when it comes to the news is essential for a well-functioning democracy so we’re proud supporters of this event.
How should you evaluate news quality?
While there are many resources to help you evaluate news quality one of the simplest comes from The International Federation of Library Associations (hat tip to Mozilla for reference) with this handy infographic:
While the above is focused on “fake news” several factors are simple and useful in evaluating news in general. So let’s try it with a sample article.
Let’s practice applying our media literacy skills
Mosey on over to NPR and pick a random article to analyze, say this one: Google Employees Walk Out To Protest Company’s Treatment Of Women.
Let’s go through the checklist from IFLA:
- Check the source.
Go to the About page for NPR and read about its history of journalism dating back to 1970. You’ll see a staff of 340 reporters and several awards won for quality journalism over the last 50 years. Seems like a reliable source.
2. Check the author.
Tap on the author buttons just below the headline and read about Emily Sullivan’s background, in particular, that she “holds bachelors degrees in psychology and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from Fordham University.” That’s very relevant to the story at hand and suggests she may have some expertise.
3. Read beyond the headlines.
Read the article and look for signs of being overly opinionated. Outside of direct quotes, the tone seems relatively balanced, though there is no comment from Google Inc. so the reporting may be one-sided.
4. Supporting sources.
There are dozens of tweets in the article (notably a tweet from accused former Google executive Andy Rubin) along with links to the NY Times article that started this employee action. There’s also a link to Google’s diversity report and another NPR article on the federal government suing Google to release data verifying Google complied with equal opportunity laws.
Seems like there’s at least some context to the story.
5. Check your biases.
The readership of NPR tends to lean-left accordingly to bias rating sites like Media Bias Fact Check. Given that this story may have political implications (what doesn’t these days?) it’s worth searching for another take on this story, perhaps from a quality right-leaning publication.
Conclusion
Overall seems like a high-quality article though perhaps not particularly balanced. Congrats on applying your media literacy framework!
Now if you’re reading this and thinking “that’s a lot of work!” or “as if I’m going to do this in my Facebook or Twitter feed!” then you’re not alone. You may want to consider using tools like Owlfactor’s browser extension or mobile app so that the above checking is automated wherever you get your news.
So all you need is OwlFactor?
No. OwlFactor applies the IFLA framework and simplifies evaluating news quality but then there is more to media literacy.
As the first guideline from this 1987 guide to media literacy says: “All media messages are constructed.”
This is arguably the most important concept. The media do not simply reflect external reality. Rather, they present carefully crafted constructions that reflect many decisions and are the result of many determining factors. Media Literacy works towards deconstructing these constructions (i.e., to taking them apart to show how they are made)
Deconstructing such messages means reading the news with a critical eye and asking the “why” behind any message you’re reading. Tools typically can’t answer this, only humans can.
In conclusion, OwlFactor helps you quickly find the best articles on a topic so you can focus on “why” a particular message was constructed without worrying as much about its basic structure and accuracy.
Happy Media Literacy Week!
