Fake News, Buzzfeed Quizzes, and Critical Literacy
Yankelovich, Inc., a marketing research company, states that “the average modern person in exposed to around 5,000 ads per day” (Tunikova, 2018). That tallies up to almost 35,000 a week! The digital age that we live in today exposes us to pictures, ads, news articles, and videos effortlessly. However, do we ever stop to question these texts and think critically about them? Do we assume them all to be accurate and reliable? Unfortunately, since we live in a digital age that does allow us to view all of these texts, we also live in a digital age where FAKE NEWS is prevalent. But, don’t worry Donald Trump will surely point it out to us, right? Anyways, we live in an age where we have to have critical literacy. Critical literacy is described as the ability and need to question presented information, rather than take in media in a passive state, as seen in the YouTube video below (2012). This is especially important for adolescents. Adolescents should critically use digital media by carefully analyzing, evaluating, and reflecting texts. They can carefully assess texts by questioning the text’s representation, language, production, and audience.
Adolescents should critically analyze, evaluate, and reflect digital media based on the concept of representation. Buckingham describes representation as critically thinking about who or what is being represented in a digital text (Buckingham, 2007). Adolescents should analyze the representation of digital medias by questioning the motives behind the author and comparing it other medias as well. An example of this is when adolescents are reading political news articles. Adolescents should question the author of the article so they can gage the articles reliability and discern against any bias. Today’s political climate is becoming increasingly polarized, so adolescents should question the representation of political news articles as well as any digital media.
Adolescents should also critically analyze, evaluate, and reflect digital media based on Buckingham’s concept of language. Buckingham describes language as “a matter of understanding the ‘grammar’ of particular forms of communication” and it also “involves a systematic awareness of how digital media is constructed” (Buckingham, 2007). Adolescents should question the rhetoric used in digital media. An example of this is seen in Julie Warner’s book, Adolescents’ New Literacies with and through Mobile Phones. Warner writes about the influence that textbooks, curricula, and teaching materials have on students. She argues that these companies have motives behind them so “a commercial agenda is thus inextricable from teaching and learning and commercial entities are afforded the power to influence what students learn, when they learn it, and how they learn it.” (Warner, 2017). Since these companies have commercial agendas, students should most certainly question the language they use. Students should analyze how for example; how a digital media communicates about the Holocaust. Questioning the language of digital media will allow students to think critically about what and how they’re learning about a subject.
Based on Buckingham’s concept of production, adolescents should question “who is communicating to whom, and why” (Buckingham, 2007). Adolescents need to understand and be aware of who is influencing them and why it is occurring. An example of this is when adolescents encounter ads on Twitter. Since we encounter around 5,000 ads a day, adolescents need to analyze these ads by questioning who is behind the ad and why they are trying to influence them. I have attached an ad directly from my own Twitter feed. I am able to discern between real news stories and promoted ads, however most adolescents can’t tell the difference. Adolescents need to understand who is targeting them and why so they can reflect on how they are being influenced.
Finally, adolescents should critically analyze, evaluate, and reflect digital media based on Buckingham’s concept of audience. Buckingham describes audience to be “an awareness of one’s own position as an audience” (Buckingham, 2007). Adolescents should question the ways in which they are being targeted. An example of this is when adolescents are used for polling. Many websites, such as Buzzfeed, will ask users to answer polling questions to spark interest and gain information. Buzzfeed is notoriously known for their quizzes. I have specifically fallen victim to these quizzes, such as one titled “Play with 9 Dogs and We’ll Reveal a Deep Truth About You” (I mean what was I going to do, say no?) Anyways, these quizzes are specifically targeted at younger audiences. However, they might have dangerous repercussions as discussed in Paul Bisceglio’s article “The Dark Side of That Personality Quiz You Just Took.” Bisceglio states that websites can sell the data you provided to advertising companies (Bisceglio, 2017). Ultimately, it is important for adolescents to question the audiences being targeted so they can evaluate their participation accordingly.
The society we live in today is increasingly exposed to thousands of digital medias a day. This means that we, and especially adolescents, need to have critical literacy so we can analyze, evaluate, and critically reflect on a digital media’s representation, language, production, and audience. These four concepts will help students better dissect and understand how digital media influences them. These adolescents need to understand, in the words of Donald Trump, that FAKE NEWS is among us and that we must be able to sift through it and find the true story amongst all the rubble.
Bibliography:
Required Readings:
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. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.
Outside Sources:
Bisceglio, P. (2017, July 13). The Dark Side of That Personality Quiz You Just Took. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/07/the-internet-is-one-big-personality-test/531861/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgUOdInej4U
Tunikova, O. (2018, April 6). How Many Ads Do You Actually See Daily? Retrieved from https://stopad.io/blog/ads-seen-daily
