Being able to change and adapt over time is a key skill in any aspect of life. Jobs are now looking for collaboration and creativity rather than the previous preference for obedience. While many basketball teams used to look for the best inside scorers, they now want three point shooters. One of these trends we don’t seem to emphasize enough is how students and the schools they attend should adjust to modern needs. One of the most important skills for students today is being able to sort through all the resources they encounter on a daily basis across all platforms including news and social media. Through analyzing perspective (understanding every piece of media contains bias), and investigating sources’ credibility, students can create a critical but not skeptical view that helps them truly understand the digital world that surrounds them.
One of the first steps to successfully being critical when using digital media is understanding that every article of media we see is written by a person. This person has reasons for both why they are putting the information out, and the manner in which they do so. While some have resorted to using guides with step by step instructions in order to evaluate online content (Buckingham, 2007), there are several very simple tools that students can use and develop to look for bias in media. This can be done through specifically observing the wording of the article and thinking “What words create a positive or negative impression?”, or “What impression would I have if different words had been used?” (NJIT, 2018). In a politically influenced modern climate, we can witness in the bias in the way news sources cover similar stories in a different fashion. Below is a video of two very different reactions from two of the most prominent news sources: FOX News and CNN to comments made by the president, Donald Trump.
Being able to point out this bias and create an independent opinion on issues is a key skill for students and a very significant part of critically viewing digital media.
Another way to utilize digital media in a critical manner is being able to investigate sources and find how much credibility they have. Completely fake articles can gain traction all the time on the internet simply due to laziness when it comes to inquiring into a source. One example of this is a story stating that Malia Obama was expelled from Harvard (McCandless, 2017). A picture of the released story is shown below.
Blindly believing all internet sources would cause an even greater polarization in beliefs if people are basing their thoughts on all different sources of information with many of them being fake. Warner states this as the cause for youth to interrogate all texts they read and most importantly circulate (Warner, p. 155). I thought this was one of the most important statements within the chapter as she includes the word circulate. If we teach all students the importance of looking into media sources the less they would circulate fake information and it would decrease the responsibility placed on the individual to sort through fake and real news. However, right now this is not the case so many websites such as Snopes.com and Politifact are great for finding the truth about current events.
While the world around us changes and the people in it adapt, many times the students we teach are left behind. Stressing the importance of modern skills will hold more importance to our future than we realize now. Being able to recognize bias and determine the credibility of sources can create a sense of critical literacy that will change the lives of students and educators alike.
References
Required Readings
Buckingham, David. (2007) Digital Media Literacies: rethinking media education in the age of the Internet. Research in Comparative and International Education, Volume 2, Number 1. p. 45–59.
Warner, Julie. Critical Digital Literacies. Adolescents’ New Literacies with and through Mobile Phones. p. 143–159.
Outside Resources
McCandless, D. (2018, July 23). Biggest Fake News Stories of 2017. Retrieved October 21, 2018, from https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/biggest-fake-news-of-2017/
NJIT. (2018, September 20). ResearchGuides: How to Evaluate Information Sources: Identify Bias. Retrieved October 21, 2018, from http://researchguides.njit.edu/evaluate/bias
