You Think You Want Media Literacy… Do You? | danah boyd

Information literacy | Social Media | Media literacy

SXSW EDU

Published on Mar 7, 2018

A decade ago, we imagined a world of participatory culture where youth would be empowered to actively and strategically use technology. Through peer/self-learning and formal education, young people have developed a well-informed understanding of the world through social media. However, this participatory culture can be unhealthy, cruel, and socially devastating. In this talk, I’ll explore unintended consequences of efforts to empower youth, media manipulation and literacy, polarization, and other issues. danah boyd Principal Researcher & Founder & President Microsoft Research/Data & Society The SXSW EDU Conference & Festival cultivates and empowers a community of engaged stakeholders to advance teaching and learning. Visit sxswedu.com to learn more.

The below original text was the basis for Data & Society Founder and President danah boyd’s March 2018 SXSW Edu keynote,“What Hath We Wrought?” — Ed.

Growing up, I took certain truths to be self evident. Democracy is good. War is bad. And of course, all men are created equal.

My mother was a teacher who encouraged me to question everything. But I quickly learned that some questions were taboo. Is democracy inherently good? Is the military ethical? Does God exist?

I loved pushing people’s buttons with these philosophical questions, but they weren’t nearly as existentially destabilizing as the moments in my life in which my experiences didn’t line up with frames that were sacred cows in my community. Police were revered, so my boss didn’t believe me when I told him that cops were forcing me to give them free food, which is why there was food missing. Pastors were moral authorities and so our pastor’s infidelities were not to be discussed, at least not among us youth. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing, but hypocrisy is destabilizing. Nothing can radicalize someone more than feeling like you’re being lied to. Or when the world order you’ve adopted comes crumbling down.

Link to post on danah boyd's blog: Click here

What changes will 2018 bring to libraries? – directly from library experts

Library Trends | Public libraries | Services | Innovations

Princh.com | Jan2018

2017 has ended and now is the time for libraries to take a look at their performance from the previous year and find new ways to add more value to their services.
To get more insights about the ways libraries should change in 2018, we have talked with 3 library experts for their insights and advice:
It is time for #libraries to take a look at their #performance from the previous year and find new ways to add more value to their #services. Click To Tweet

1. Laurinda Thomas, Team Leader, Libraries and Community Spaces – ‎Wellington City Council, New Zealand

I want 2018 to be the year that Libraries put a stake in the ground about what they stand for and stretch their ideas about how we do tha

Hearing other voices in a world of fake news

While “fake news” isn’t a new idea, the awareness of the public about mis- and dis-information is probably at an all-time high. More libraries will step up to the plate on educating people how to be media savvy, break out of their “media silos” to hear other voices, and help people understand how to work and communicate in a digital world that generally tries to reinforce our confirmation bias’ rather than expose us to a range of ideas and experiences.  Read more...

91-year-old former congressman shows millennials how to tweet about Trump | Mashable

Social media | Politics | Public activism

 by Sasha Lekach | 09-16-27

John Dingell has been owning Twitter for years.

 

91-year-old former congressman John Dingell has been quick, witty, and on fire with his 140 characters for years.

Despite his age, he knows how to use the tweet machine the way it was intended: biting commentary, playful retweets, and insightful and smart reactions. Time and again he's shown he's mastered Twitter.
After tweeter-in-chief Donald Trump was elected, Dingell's Twitter game has become even more relevant and fiery.

SEE ALSO: Artist paints offensive tweets he received outside Twitter's HQ to highlight how Twitter handles abuse

After the violence in Charlottesville and Trump's bumbling mess of a response to the anti-Semitism and white supremacy on display, Dingell took to Twitter in the days following. One particular tweet resonated, with thousands praising the longtime Michigan lawmaker for posting what the president struggled to say.

Just look at those likes. Read more...

Trust and Distrust in Online Fact-Checking Services

Fact Checking | Fake News  | Media literacy

By Petter Bae Brandtzaeg, Asbjørn Følstad
Communications of the ACM, Vol. 60 No. 9, Pages 65-71
10.1145/3122803

While the internet has the potential to give people ready access to relevant and factual information, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have made filtering and assessing online content increasingly difficult due to its rapid flow and enormous volume. In fact, 49% of social media users in the U.S. in 2012 received false breaking news through social media.⁸ Likewise, a survey by Silverman¹¹ suggested in 2015 that false rumors and misinformation disseminated further and faster than ever before due to social media. Political analysts continue to discuss misinformation and fake news in social media and its effect on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.


Read article:



Trust and Distrust in Online Fact-Checking Services: Even when checked by fact checkers, facts are often still open to preexisting bias and doubt.

You can now call your elected officials through Facebook | March 27, 2017

Activism | Social Media | Politics

By Brian Fung

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)

 

 

Since the election in November, U.S. lawmakers have received a deluge of phone calls from Americans weighing in on the GOP's congressional agenda. Now, those floodwaters may rise even higher as Facebook rolls out new tools making it easier for users to contact their representatives. The tools, which were being beta-tested but went live to all Facebook users Monday, could lead to a lot more calls from constituents who are pleading to be heard.

One of Facebook's new tools, Town Hall, allows you to find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. You can get to it by visiting facebook.com/townhall, by looking under the "Explore" section of your News Feed on a desktop, or by looking in the menu of your Facebook app on your phone. Read more...

Facebook and Google: most powerful and secretive empires we've ever known | 28 September 2016 |The guardian

Google | Facebook | Social media | Citizen journalism | Technology | Internet

We are living in the web['s goldfish bowl. Photograph: Alamy

Google and Facebook have conveyed nearly all of us to this page, and just about every other idea or expression we’ll encounter today. Yet we don’t know how to talk about these companies, nor digest their sheer power. 

We call them platforms, networks or gatekeepers. But these labels hardly fit. The appropriate metaphor eludes us; even if we describe them as vast empires, they are unlike any we’ve ever known. Far from being discrete points of departure, merely supporting the action or minding the gates, they have become something much more significant. They have become the medium through which we experience and understand the world.

As their users, we are like the blinkered young fish in the parable memorably retold by David Foster Wallace. When asked “How’s the water?” we swipe blank: “What the hell is water?”

We pay attention, sometimes, to racism, death threats, outrage. Other than that, we have barely started feeling their algorithmic undertow. We have trouble grasping the scope of it: the vast server farms, the job cuts, the barriers to entry, the public-private partnerships, the manufacturing of data, the knowing cities, the branded self, the slavish service to their metrics, the monoculture. Read more...

Facebook has quietly rolled out its long-awaited solution to fake news | 4 March 2017

Fake news | Media literacy | Social Media

by Emma Hinchliffe

Since people first started complaining about "fake news" on Facebook, the phrase has evolved—from a useful way to identify false-information-masquerading-as-traditional-news, to a term that means basically nothing, now wielded by President Donald Trump against stories he doesn't like, and also, drunk people in bars screaming about things and/or sports results they disagree with.

But the original problem still genuinely exists. And Facebook finally came out with its long-awaited response to beginning to cut away at the issue.

Spotted on Twitter on Friday night, the tool identifies links to sites known to produce misinformation. The tool cites third-party fact-checking organizations like Snopes and Politifact—the kind of sites that Trump supporters also like to dispute.  Read more...

Fighting Fake News: How libraries can lead the way on media literacy | December 27, 2016

Fake news | Information literacy | Journalism

by Marcus Banks

Illustration: Rebecca Lomax/American Libraries

 

 

Librarians—whether public, school, academic, or special—all seek to ensure that patrons who ask for help get accurate information.


Given the care that librarians bring to this task, the recent explosion in unverified, unsourced, and sometimes completely untrue news has been discouraging, to say the least. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of US adults are getting their news in real time from their social media feeds. These are often uncurated spaces in which falsehoods thrive, as revealed during the 2016 election. To take just one example, Pope Francis did not endorse Donald Trump, but thousands of people shared the “news” that he had done so.

Completely fake news is at the extreme end of a continuum. Less blatant falsehoods involve only sharing the data that puts a proposal in its best light, a practice of which most politicians and interest group spokespeople are guilty.

The news-savvy consumer is able to distinguish fact from opinion and to discern the hallmarks of evasive language and half-truths. But growing evidence suggests that these skills are becoming rarer. A November 2016 study by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) showed that students have difficulty separating paid advertising from news reporting, and they are apt to overlook clear evidence of bias in the claims they encounter. These challenges persist from middle school to college.

According to SHEG Director Sam Wineburg, professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education, “nothing less than our capacity for online civic reasoning is at risk.”

Librarians and journalists: natural allies

Read more...