Critical Digital Literacy: Teaching Adolescents to Think For Themselves
Adolescents should critically use digital media in every aspect of their digital space. Doing this means looking at the media viewed with a microscopic lense. Critically using digital media involves delving down into the text, analyzing on it, reflecting on what is presented, and asking questions looking for bias, author, credibility and reliability, and source, and adolescent should always do this.
One of the most popular forms of social media is Twitter. Famous celebrities, political parties, and news stations all post on this site. We see things all of the time on this platform that can be false. How we find out how reliable something is comes from looking at author credibility (how reliable the author is), bias (how the article or source leans toward a side of an argument or post), and source (where the text comes from). For example, there have been Tweets about famous people doing or saying things that have not been true. We have to look at those three tools mentioned above to determine if this is true. Fact checking is a great way to increase critical literacy. Seeing if what you see on one platform matches the information on a different reliable source can help enhance your critical literacy skills.
According to Washington Post, “teens are spending more than one-third of their days using media such as online video or music” (Tsukayama). That equates to almost nine hours of their day, and their research from The Common Sense census indicates that this trend is growing. With this much time spent in the digital world, students need to know how to critically use what is in front of them. They need to ask questions about the author writing the text, the grammar he/she uses, and how it is targeted to the audience. It is nearly impossible to remain neutral when writing about a topic and there is always some bias in writing, whether intentional or not. When a student interrogates a text looking at author and bias, they can find the intention of the text and author, and this can help them deduce a conclusion about the text. Is it reliable? What was the meaning for writing this? Does it adequately view both sides of a story? These are just a few questions that should be asked when reading an online text.
David Buckingham looks at digital literacy and media and it’s previous emphasis on it as an information source, and says that “We need to acknowledge the fact that digital media are cultural forms that are inextricably connected with other visual and audio-visual media” (Buckingham 45). Digital media is a tool that can help identify taste of the reader and writer, and identity.
Julie Warner writes, “As youth actively engage with, rework, and appropriate ideological messages in texts, particularly within processes that are characterized by their rapidity (curation, microblogging, or social photosharing) this need for critical literacies becomes apparent” (Warner 153). What she means is that popular texts today, such as memes are a way for students to understand critical literacies. Teaching critical literacy shows students their place in society, as a reader, engager, and writer. They see that what they engage with makes them who they are as a collaborative partner in these online texts.
For my final thought, I leave you with this TED Talk. Andrea Quijada looks at the complexities of critical digital literacy and how it relates to things such as culture and technology. Critical digital literacy should be implemented in every classroom, and students should critically think about every text they read, looking at things such as author choice, bias, and why these texts are written. Engaging with this media enhances student identity, culture, and their knowledge of texts and how to responsibly engage with them!
Course Resources
Buckingham, D. (2007). Digital Media Literacies: rethinking media education in the age of the Internet. Research in Comparative and International Education, 2(1), 43–55.
Warner, J. (2017). Adolescents New Literacies with and through Mobile Phones. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers.
Outside Resources
TEDxTalks. “Creating Critical Thinkers through Media Literacy: Andrea Quijada at TEDxABQED.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Feb. 2013, Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHAApvHZ6XE.
Tsukayama, Hayley. “Teens Spend Nearly Nine Hours Every Day Consuming Media.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 Nov. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/03/teens-spend-nearly-nine-hours-every-day-consuming-media/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.fea1bae59bc1.
