Posts Tagged ‘media’
Comparing media literacy?
Posted on: May 3, 2020
My RSS feed showed me this graphic on media literacy in European countries. No surprises — the Scandinavian countries lead the pack.
I wondered if there was anything similar for this part of the world. So I searched for NGOs that researched it starting with the one credited in the graphic.
I could not find anything from such organisations so I widened my search for “media literacy in southeast asia”. Except for a few old articles like this one in 2008, I could not find comparison or rank tables.
It is not that the rankings are important. I want to know WHAT we are doing compared to elsewhere. An initial comparison of HOW we are doing might have opened doors to the WHAT.
But since media literacy across curricula and goes beyond formal schooling, it must be difficult to collect and make sense of such data. So now I wonder how that credited organisation actually ranked those countries.
I downloaded the PDF of the report which had a one-page description of its methodology. It turns out that that the “measurement” was not about media literacy. It was about predicting media literacy with components like PISA scores. What? My question exactly.
So my tweet is not an endorsement of the graphic. It is an example of not taking data presentation at face value.
Navigating digital information 2
Posted on: January 17, 2019
Here some of my notes on the second part of Crash Course’s series on media and digital literacies.
This episode focused on fact checking. To do this, presenter John Green outlined a Stanford University study on how a group university professors and students evaluated information online.
The participants focused on superficial elements of source sites, e.g., how it presented information, instead of looking deeper on what information it shared.
On the other hand, professional fact checkers armed themselves with at least three questions to evaluate sources:
- Who is behind this information and why are they sharing it?
- What is the evidence for their claims?
- What do other sources say about the sharer and its claims?
Answering these questions is not as simple as ABC, but it does provide an easy-to-remember set of 1-2-3 to evaluate what we read, watch, or listen to.
Near the end of the video, Green highlighted the difference between being cynical and being skeptical. The former is being “generally distrustful of everyone else’s motives” while the latter is being “not easily convinced”.
All of us could use a healthy dose of skepticism every day. The problem is that our bias might raise this shield when the information does not align to what we already know or believe. This is why asking the 1-2-3 regardless of source or our compass helps keep us in check.
Navigating digital information 1
Posted on: January 10, 2019
John Green and co have just released part 1 of their Crash Course series on navigating digital information.
If I had to sum up the takeaway from the video, it would be this: Just because it looks like a news article does not make it one. Appearances like layout, graphics, and slickness matter, but these should not distract from the quality and accuracy of the content. To determine those latter qualities, we need to investigate the sources of the article.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
However, Green mentioned a study by the Stanford History Education Group which highlighted how historians and university students focused on the superficial instead of digging deep.
Speaking of digging deep, I could find the Stanford group online, but not the documentation about the study from the Crash Course video page. Might Crash Course consider providing a link to such evidence and not just its main sponsors/collaborators?
Why we need…
Posted on: May 21, 2018
The headlines highlighted in this tweet are why we need:
- science and experts.
- to be information and media literate.
- to follow entities outside our bubbles.
Forbes and NASA have experts that are good at what they do. Both provided commentary on a shared observation. Only one was actually informative — NASA.
If we were information and media literate — collectively digitally literate — we would be skeptical of Forbes’ report and know how to investigate the issue. We would then find NASA’s version of the event and we would be able to evaluate what we find.
Operating outside our bubbles allows us to see what others see. Operate in the Forbes or entertainment bubble and we see only mystery or ignorance. Operate in the scientific bubble and we see more factual information.
That said, I follow You Had One Job on Twitter because it is funny. It is also provocative in that it helps me make critical connections. So while being digitally literate and sourcing expertise are important, it helps to first operate outside one’s bubble.
Foundation of future literacies
Posted on: May 18, 2018
This excellent YouTube series on media literacy ends with the episode below.
The episode focuses on what lies ahead. As it does so, it builds on what was stable, remains stable now, and will be stable in the future.
The future of being media literate is being skeptical. This does not mean that we cannot enjoy watch we hear, read, or watch.
It does mean that we do not take the easy way out. Being skeptical means being aware of our own bias and identifying the bias in media. It means establishing context and being critical “going in” instead of just reacting when “going out”.
