Why Even the Most Basic Level of Information Literacy is Important
The current media landscape worldwide is confusing, to say the least. With misinformation and disinformation on the rise, especially in the United States, readers have begun to gravitate toward partisan media because it provides clearer information and a clear emotional interpretation of how that information is supposed to make the reader feel. Too many people simply do not have the skills to be able to fact-check the information they consume because they’ve accepted fiction as fact before doing any research. That’s the goal of misinformation and disinformation—to easily manipulate and weaken the knowledge base of its readers.
The need for information literacy is growing, and not just for journalists. Important details that affect people’s daily lives are now at stake, such as the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine, the legitimacy of the 2020 U.S. election, and the rise of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and violence in the United States. Understanding the greater nuances of these topics is more important than a simple declarative statement of “X is bad!” or “X is good!” which is often how partisan media boils down talking points.
The first piece of information everybody needs to know how to read better is themselves. Confirmation bias, or using prior knowledge and experience to only seek out facts that confirm our personal worldview, is rampant in the media landscape now. Bad actors such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson prey upon confirmation biases, especially of families with legitimate anxieties about society, to create a partisan landscape, or more accurately, a split landscape: Carlson’s idea of nebulous powers-that-be that want to control the intimate details of daily life are unfortunately watched and consumed by people on both sides of the political spectrum. The only way to be aware of confirmation bias is through self-confrontation, which is not an easy task.
The next thing is to understand the goal of the media one is consuming. Sponsored content, for example, is content that someone has paid extra money toward in order for it to appear front and center in any and all search engines—even search engines on social media. Native ads present a similar picture if they’re contained in a news story: native ads are chameleonic advertisements that look as though they are part of a story or a news article, when in actuality they lead somewhere else entirely. Native ads are employed to deceive users into generating clicks whereas reliable journalism seldom relies on deception in order to disseminate information.
If the goal of the content producer is to make money and only to make money, the hallmarks of partisan media will usually be there: a disregard or disdain for the ethics of professional journalism, oversimplified or reductive takes on nuanced or complex issues, and pieces that already have a point of view embedded.
“We, as humans, are what we call ‘cognitive misers,'” said Jessica F. Sparks, a leader on a study conducted at the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. “There are people who like to use more cognitive energy, but most of us don’t. And so, when we think about it that way, when we read simplified text — especially text that frames things as us-versus-them — it’s easier to process that than [news reports that examine] the complex goings-on of Washington.”
Knowing which platforms are giving usable, reliable information and data is a great place to start, but even reliable platforms are usually guilty of some form of confirmation bias. Learning to parse out information on an individual level is one of the most valuable skills a journalist can develop. If journalists can commit to a stronger baseline of fact-checking and media literacy, the rest of society will surely follow.
