Participants:
Tara Pixley (co-host)
Alayna Hutchinson (co-host)
Doron Taussig
Michelle Ferrier
Summer Moore
Ben Schittler
Steven Arroyo
Taylor Naroz
Defining media literacy
- Understanding media process and practices
- Disinformation/misinformation, how to identify it
- Ability to understand facts and sources
- Understanding communication channels
- Everyone has lots of different truths, but facts are facts; we come to our truths through the assessment of facts
Media literacy to digital resilience
- Michelle Ferrier’s work
- Developed a curriculum called Generation Zeitgeist
- Looking at how to change behaviors online and address harms
Media literacy is a global problem, it’s not getting easier
- Traditional mediums through which people receive their news rapidly changed, distrust rose, and for many people and communities there had been a history of distrust due to harm caused in those communities, specifically communities of color
- Pew Research Center looks at trust in all cultural institutions and has found that trust in all institutions has declined
- People only follow social media accounts and news organizations that deliver the news they’re interested in
- People can become radicalized easily because they don’t have time to process a lot of information
- Journalism education is behind; many journalism professors have not been in a newsroom for 20+ years
- Many journalists are not media literate – they are not taught critical thinking. The idea of objectivity is deeply ingrained
- Journalism started paying attention to the needs of media literacy when misinformation/disinformation became a huge problem, but this problem has existed
Solutions
- One part is the individual changing their behavior, but it’s also building media literacy into news practices and news product development
- Community members need to be including in the news production processes
- Deep listening and co-creation with community members
- Example: WBEZ (Chicago) Community Listening Sessions
- Journalists hold 1:1 conversations with community members in public spaces
- Journalist listens to what’s happening in the community and asks what community members want to see covered
- Journalist collects information and produces stories based on that information
- Journalists need to understand and acknowledge their own biases, and to go beyond interviewing skills and to learn more listening skills and relationship building
- There needs to be a radical shift within journalism education
- Media literacy education should be taught at the elementary level
- Media literacy curriculums: Facing History and Ourselves, News Literacy Project, Coalition for Children’s Media
- Teach children research skills