You are not immune: Why media literacy must have no exceptions

This piece by Jenna Denomme gives the topic of media literacy both the depth and breadth that it needs. Bottom line: nobody is immune to misinformation and media literacy is something that everyone needs to attain. It is not a partisan issue. I encourage everyone to follow Jenna’s Blog for updates. Her work is something to watch out for.

Jenna's Journal

Media literacy, taught properly, is for everyone – and it must not be applied unevenly

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I’m a child of liberals. For many years growing up, I watched Good Morning America every week morning, and NBC and CBS every night. My grandfather on my mom’s side, who had proposed Elizabeth Warren as a strong presidential candidate before even 2016, was always up to talk with me about politics. I remember late nights where he’d pick me up from chorus practice and, on the drive home, fill me in about the conflict in Ukraine. I’ve always trusted the opinions of him and my other well-educated family members on these topics.

I’m also a child of the Internet. While I would say I wasn’t active on any major social media sites until high school, YouTube is the big exception. And I remember that some of the binges I’d go on back in 2013…

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The Power of Grassroots: What led us here?

This piece by Will Coleman on grassroots organizing and community building is really quite inspiring. He expands on his original blog to discuss Bernie’s campaign, community effort to save a local museum in Winlock,Washington and a clean water and energy community initiative in New Jersey.

The Main Brain

_{Bernie Sanders at a rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, Photo by Lorie Shaull}

The rise of widely accessible social media platforms has afforded new and powerful tools for local civic engagement and organization, making it a key part of the last three presidential elections. Powerful local initiatives are called Grassroots movements or actions, and have become increasingly socially and politically relevant within the last eight years. Joe Biden’s record breaking election was driven in large part by efforts from local and national organizations to get people out to vote, working in communities across the country despite the prevalence of COVID-19. The work done to inform communities on voting can be attributed to local grassroots efforts, who gained international attention in some places by setting up stations to inform people on where and how to vote in their communities. Grassroots efforts also famously pushed Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign to the national…

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The New Forefront of Civic Education is… the Gaming Industry?

Abram’s piece on how the gaming industry has become a critical conduit to civic engagement is well worth reading in its expanded version. This piece , which extends the analysis of Abram’s original blog post, is from his E-portfolio.

Massachusetts By Maine

One of the many challenges impeding widespread media literacy is a lack of civil engagement. Without an understanding both of historical and contemporary civics issues and topics, conversations surrounding media literacy will be unproductive. Fortunately, I attended a college prep school from seventh grade until I graduated high school, and civic engagement was paramount to my education. From volunteering projects to dedicated classes, civic values were solidly instilled in me. Unfortunately, my experience is irregular. There is a crisis of civic understanding and engagement. This is a crisis that is actively being addressed, and the solutions are coming from atypical places.

One of those is the video game industry, as unlikely as it may initially sound. However, promoting civic engagement through gaming is both incredibly smart and incredibly vital. As the industry grows in scope, its tangential communities grow alongside it. This is a landscape full of content creators…

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From English to Computer Science in Under a Decade: The Rapidly Changing Education of Journalists

This piece from Delaney’s E-portfolio wonderfully expands on her first blog post for the semester. I highly recommend it to anyone preparing for a career in journalism 2.0.

Delaney Beaudoin

Protesters commenting on the relationship between fake news and real life occurrences. “People Rallying holding posters.” CC-BY. https://www.piqsels.com/en/public-domain-photo-sfrq

By: Delaney Beaudoin-  March 17, 2021

The most common rhetoric regarding the invasion of technology into the workforce traditionally focuses on the idea of job-stealing. Machines replacing working hands and transforming the once reliable industry of blue-collar work to a highly competitive sphere under which the rug is apt to be pulled out from underneath. Yet, another arguably more frightening phenomena often overlooked is that when technology does not steal one’s job, but instead rapidly shifts the environment. Ever progressing until the job in question has been altered into an almost unrecognizable entity, demanding a task foreign to even the most seasoned professional. Has the rapid progression of the internet and massive increase of digital content production usurped the role journalists once considered themselves experts in?

The unfortunate answer is yes. A…

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America’s Working-Class Issues

This thoughtful blog post about the pressures caused by poverty, unemployment and dehumanizing jobs on civic life is from James’ eportfolio. I’m glad he got to finish this piece, which should have been part of the civic engagement issue.

James Tello Portfolio

Living conditions are rough in some areas of America. An average working-class citizen may need to work multiple jobs to buy food and pay for rent. Essentials for living are getting more expensive, and mental health has become a major issue in the country. So, we must ask why does it have to be this way? Why are the exact issues and how can we change it?  

First, let’s look at the wages in America over the past decade. According to a CNN article by Lydia DePills published in 2019, “America’s base pay rate has remained at $7.25 an hour since July 24, 2009 — 3,614 days ago on Sunday. That will be the biggest time lapse since July 2007, when the wage hadn’t risen since September 1997.” The article also mentions research at MIT as shown that the average living wage would be $16.14 an hour. There are…

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Negative Data

This eye-opening piece about negative data is from Spencer’s eportfolio. I’m glad he expanded on his ideas in his unpublished draft!

Jouranlism 2.0 E-Portfolio

Photo by @nasa on unsplash

The data collected by users from sites like Google and Facebook are used to create algorithms that can auto- generate recommendations based on your past interactions. While algorithms are helpful in our daily internet use to help us get from point A to point B quicker, not knowing which of your data are being harvested for algorithms is uncomfortable for personal privacy. .

Unfortunately, “Over the entire length of time a user participates on social media or media sites, the small actions and digital interactions, such as likes, comments, ratings, reads, views, and shares, are accumulated into large mathematical database”. Even your watch time on videos is collected by sites like Facebook in order to track your internet habits. Even worse, social media and search sites collect negative data about users as well. Negative data is user’s data that wasn’t officially posted to a site…

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Civic Education in School Curricula Today: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

An inspiring story by Mia Len. This blog post from her eportfolio expands on her blog post earlier in the semester. The takeaway is all the stronger for it.

Mia Len's E-Portfolio

Mia Len

Photo byNathan DumlaoonUnsplash

The presidential election of 2016 – the moment in my life that changed the meaning and importance of the term “civic education” for me. In high school, I knew what it was, and I knew the “importance” of it, but I didn’t understand the importance of it. The election changed the meaning of civic education to me because I realized, first-hand, why it was so important. If my age group wants our kids to grow up in a world where rape cases are taken lightly, if at all, and where the energy of politicians is put into taking away the rights of pregnant woman who want to get abortions, then by all means, let’s continue to ignore this downward trend of civic engagement. But, if we want to live in a world where the color of your skin wouldn’t prevent you from

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Media Literacy pros and cons

This week, we each took the News Literacy Project's News Literacy Quiz and the results were a wake-up call for all of us. Even those of us who consider ourselves heavy news readers found that there were gaps in our understanding of basic journalistic standards and practices. We also read David Buckingham's "Fake News: Is …

What is Journalism 2.0 at Wheaton College?

This is a brand new course, first taught in the Spring of 2020. The course examines how the Internet has profoundly altered the nature of journalism and consequently, the nature of civic engagement in the United States. Students gain media literacy training, an introduction to the theory and practice of civic media and with this …