Understanding Digital Literacy and Responsible Digital Writing
Final Publication Reflection
Web 2.0 brought rise to the proliferation of easily accessible information. While the ability to have access to such a breadth of information at your fingertips can be an extremely useful tool, it also results in false information being spread and often believed. As Jones and Hafner (2012) put it, Web 2.0 brings affordances and constraints. In other words, it is an absolutely revolutionary tool, but it comes with some serious drawbacks. With unprecedented access to information comes unprecedented challenges. False information is everywhere, often hidden or not immediately apparent, and the effects can be devastating. While Web 2.0 has made it difficult to know what to trust, there are simple ways of checking information that can significantly help with analysis.
One of the biggest changes Web 2.0 has created is making it so that our attention does not necessarily belong to us. Instead, attention economies on the internet profit off of getting as much attention as possible, where algorithms can be the ones making more decisions about what we see than we do. Between a large amount of information, the lack of trust, and our agency in what we see being blurred, navigating the world with Web 2.0 can be a slippery slope. While it is very important that everyone is aware of the possible drawbacks, it is ultimately imperative that public digital writers are both aware of and do everything they can to help mitigate these challenges in order to construct a better climate on the internet. The reality is that anything written and posted publicly has the ability to affect others, sometimes in profound ways.
The consequences of accepting false information can be extreme, making it imperative that digital citizens, writers, and consumers, practice conscientious digital citizenship. Web 2.0 practices and discourses make it so that most of the information which greatly affects our daily lives often comes from some internet source, whether it is blogs, social media, or news articles, all of these sources are often used to gather information on both inconsequential and very important topics. Social media, for example, is a huge reservoir of news information, being a primary resource for many people, young and old, to get their news.
Oftentimes, when information that seems correct is posted on the internet, people tend to believe it. Things like confirmation bias make it so that when something pops up that confirms a previously held idea, the viewer’s first instinct is not to question the validity of the information or the source. Digital attention has become a commodity, and sites will push information that is getting the most clicks, even if it is not true or helpful. Things like algorithms can help perpetuate outrageous ideas and stories, taking personal choice out of the equation. Public writers can help mitigate this by taking steps to be conscientious digital citizens by making sure what they post is true and helpful to avoid the spread of false information and help mitigate digital anxieties.
One of the most important lessons for digital citizens to know is how to use their attention on the internet. Though we are unable to change the fact that all the information reaching us is ‘biased,’ we can have a say in whether the information we interact with is truthful, and we can be equipped with the tools to check information instead of accepting and perpetuating it. “Attention economies,” as identified by Jones and Hafner (2012) maintain that the massive amount of information which is available with Web 2.0 requires users to make decisions about where to focus their attention. If the media that gets our attention is false and then we decide to read, believe, and share it with others, then we are perpetuating false information simply by giving it our attention When false things are clicked on, similar media will continue to reach you, and soon your entire internet reality is characterized by questionable information. Simply stopping before clicking on something, can help stop the spread of potentially harmful or unhelpful information. This is especially important for digital writers as we decide what sources are useful; developing skills to quickly and easily decide this is essential.
As Tolentino (2020) asserts in the article “The I in the Internet,”
“we can, and probably do, limit our online activity to websites that further reinforce our own sense of identity, each of us reading things written for people just like us.”
If we, like Tolentino asserts, get stuck in a world of information that supports what we want to see, this can have negative effects when it results in constructing a false and potentially harmful reality. As digital writers, we have a say in what kind of information gets made and spread. While we personally cannot control whether someone else’s story gets shared and believed, we can make sure that what we are giving our attention to, writing, and citing is trustworthy and credible.
To illustrate the possible consequences of false information spread on the internet, lesson one of Check Please! tells the story of Dylann Roof to illustrate the devastating effects of false information spread online. His story was shocking and compelling, exemplifying the actualized consequences of being ignorant of whether the information you are seeing, clicking, and believing is actually credible. If Roof was equipped with the digital literacy skills to help him navigate online information, perhaps he never would have believed the false, extremist, conspiracy information that led him to commit murder in 2015. While it is a part of every digital citizen’s job to practice digital literacy, it is first and foremost the job of the digital writers to post such information. Unfortunately, we can not stop terrible people from posting harmful information online, but as digital writers and digital citizens, there are steps we can take to mitigate these risks.
One of the best things for digital writers and citizens to remember when interacting with information on the internet is to stop. This is the first step of the SIFT Method presented by the Check Please! Lessons. SIFT provides a more time-efficient method for checking sources, with the goal of making it simpler for digital users. While checking information can feel like a daunting task, it is actually extremely simple, it just takes being equipped with the know-how and a little bit of healthy skepticism. The first and most important step is to stop. The following letters remind users to consider the platform, media, and credibility, find what else is being written about the topic, and find out where the claim first appeared in order to get the most credible information. This can help digital users quickly establish the credibility of a story, website, etc. This lesson also established that using websites such as Wikipedia can help give insight into whether organizations and people are credible. Wikipedia includes information such as political lean, and possible agendas, and can even identify when some websites are satire and therefore should not be taken seriously. Overall, these simple tips can have a huge impact on recognizing false information and potential agendas or lean.
As has been discussed, Web 2.0 makes it hard to know what information is true or not, and to combat this, one of the most important things to do as digital writers is to establish transparency. If someone puts information out on the internet, it is their responsibility to make sure their sources are transparent so that they do not add to the spread of misinformation. Easily providing sources through hyperlinks makes sources easily accessible while also holding the author accountable. As such, it is easy for an author to write something that they heard and believed, but practicing using hyperlinks holds authors accountable to find a source to back up certain points. Hyperlinks are also an extremely user-friendly tool as they are a very easy way for readers to see where information is coming from and to get more information if they want to.
When talking about digital writers, this is not only referring to people who write for a big publication, this can also be understood as anyone who writes public content on the internet. While it could be said that some people have more responsibility than others, any public writing has the opportunity to go ‘viral’ and be perpetuated. Even if the content is not written for the purpose of reaching a broad audience in the first place, all public work has that capability, and therefore all digital citizens should uphold a basic understanding of the proper practices to uphold conscientious digital citizenship. Simply writing a blog or social media post has the ability to get spread and believed. Just like it is easy to believe something you see on a TikTok, something written on social media or on a public blog site can be spread, believed, and twisted. Even for people who are not writers at all, but just digital citizens, it is important to understand the consequences of believing and spreading information. Something as small as reposting something on your Instagram story could help perpetuate a potentially harmful story.
The idea that virtually anything on the internet could be somehow harmful is anxiety-inducing for digital citizens, and digital writers must practice conscientiousness by making sure their writing does not add to the myriad of false and stressful discourses and practices. While it may seem like digital information has purely digital effects, the reality is that the information we get online has a massive effect on our daily lives. When someone shares information in ‘real life’ that they got from the internet, it is hard to know whether or not it is true. The key is understanding that Web 2.0 has completely shifted how we interact with information, creating both digital and completely tangible positive and negative side effects. Being aware of these challenges and how to navigate this information is essential for digital citizens but first and foremost it is the responsibility of those who write on the internet publicly to uphold conscientious digital citizenship by making sure what they share is true and transparent.
