Media Literacy: the Blindspot of a Generation

I am a member of Generation Z; the first generation to have grown-up without memories of life before the internet, when people got their news from TV or papers – credible mainstream sources that generally maintained trusted standards of fact-checking. Today, most of my peers get their news from social media – from trending hashtags and others sharing articles and stories that may or may not be true. Often, our version of fact-checking is simply Googling something and scanning to see how many different sources are reporting the same thing. The problem with this method is that if everybody does that – including those writing the articles, a solitary piece of initial misinformation suddenly spreads like wildfire, and the more people repeat it, the more credible it appears to be, and therefore, the more people repeat it… etc. It’s a vicious cycle. From 2018-2019, Stanford tested a national sample of 3,446 students’ ability to assess digital sources on the internet. The study found that:

• Fifty-two percent of students believed a grainy video claiming to show ballot stuffing in the 2016 Democratic primaries constituted “strong evidence” of voter fraud in the U.S.

• Only three students tracked down the source of the video. A quick Google search could have exposed the fake video. It was actually shot in Russia to manipulate the public into believing that the election was rigged.

• Two-thirds of students couldn’t tell the difference between news stories and ads (set off by the words “Sponsored Content”) on Slate magazine’s homepage.

• Ninety-six percent of students deemed a climate change website that promoted fossil fuels to be credible. The students focused on superficial markers of credibility: the site’s aesthetics, its top-level domain, or how it portrayed itself on the About page.

What is clear is that my generation needs the skillset to be able to determine credible from non-credible sources and information. So where can we start?

Here are a couple of questions that you can start asking yourself when it comes to verifying or analyzing information:

• What is the date on this article/study/post?

• Have you heard of the source/person posting before?

• Are they offering their own sources/citations/evidence for information or claims they are making?

• Are there (other) mainstream media sources reporting the same thing?

• Whose perspective am I getting here, and whose might be missing?

• Does anybody stand to benefit from this message? Is the article promoting a service or product, or does it have a political agenda?

The foreseeable future is more and more virtual, with more and more media creators and sources saturating the landscape. This is great for diversity of voices, representation and alternative perspectives, but not so great for verifiable information or limiting the existence of “alternative facts.” Without this education, our very democracy is at stake. How can we make informed decisions as citizens if we don’t know who or what to believe?

A media literacy education should begin the moment that an individual begins engaging with media. For my generation and those to follow, that’s pretty much from birth – but I supposed high school would be a good starting point.