Media Literacy is a term that’s garnered increased attention in recent years. As we are living in what feels like an era of misinformation, it makes sense. Many in liberal circles have called for increased media literacy education, so that students can learn to navigate the news with a critical eyes in the digital age. It is tempting to throw the term around as the end-all, be-all of stopping “fake news,” but this is ultimately akin to putting a band-aid over a broken leg. If we are to emphasize the importance of media literacy, we owe it to ourselves to critically examine our current understanding of it, and identify its potential flaws.
One of the biggest problems in our current approach to teaching media literacy is that it over-simplifies the issue. We tell kids to do their own research and trust their own judgment, and on the surface, that seems reasonable enough. But there can be unintended consequences to this, particularly in right-wing communities. In Danah Boyd’s thought-provoking article, “Did Media Literacy Backfire?” she writes,
“I remember a casual conversation that I had with a teen girl in the midwest… she matter-of-factly explained a variety of ‘facts’ she had heard that were completely inaccurate. You couldn’t get pregnant until you were 16. AIDS spreads through kissing. Etc…. She explained that she and her friends had done the research themselves, by which she meant that they’d identified websites online that ‘proved’ their beliefs.”
In our hopes to encourage people to be responsible media consumers, we instead open the door for confirmation bias, particularly among young people.
This gets at one of the dangerous fallacies in our current version of media literacy, which is its individualism. It’s unsurprising, as the very core of American bootstrap ideology is that individuals are responsible for their own wellbeing, and naturally this would extend to their knowledge as well. The problem with individualism is that it completely discounts larger systemic issues, and it’s no different with regards to media literacy. When we tell people to do their own research, to look at all sides for themselves, we are abdicating all responsibility, putting the onus entirely on the individual. This might be tempting, but it also fails to take into account the ease with which people can fall into echo chambers in the digital age, with companies like Facebook creating algorithms that specifically cater to each user’s personal beliefs. Take into consideration your own Facebook/Twitter feeds, or your Google search results: how often do you come across something that genuinely challenges the opinions you already hold?
In asking these questions of ourselves, we inevitably come to the conclusion that this is a more complex issue than just “doing your own research.” It requires us to pose more controversial questions interrogating systems of power. For example, how should we regulate social media companies such as Facebook, which only stand to benefit from the spread of fake news and the increase of political polarization? When does it make sense to leave our individualist ideology behind and put our trust in the opinions of experts? These are questions that come without a clear answer, but if we refuse to even have the discussion, we will be doing a disservice to both ourselves and future generations.
Journalism 2.0 