Media Literacy

When I was in junior high I loved the tabloids. You could pick one up at the checkout line in the supermarket anywhere. They had so many flashy, and really not very factual, articles. You can still find them, although they usually revolve around celebrities and not alien landings. Today, of course, young people get their information from the internet. But the one thing tabloids had in common with today’s internet is that facts were not always present. Facts did not sell papers, shock value did. Today it’s how do you get someone to click on your page? The solution? Clickbait, make the headline as extreme as you can. Back then it was a more innocent time where tabloids couldn’t do much harm. Today, however, we are seeing disinformation proliferate on social media platforms to the point where people are unsure of what is real and what isn’t. It can cause real world consequences that impact our lives and our future. Propagandists, both foreign and domestic, are using these platforms to further their own agendas, not ours. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to make up my own mind about things, not let someone else do it for me.


So how to counter this? I was very pleased to see that there are actually people who are trying. See the article and included video below:

How to counter disinformation

This librarian is right, it doesn’t matter what beliefs you may have. What is important is basing those beliefs on facts. It may take some double checking but in the end finding the truth is like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Someone once said, knowledge is power. They were right. Because knowledge will prevent a person from being used by those seeking power. In this ever more complex and dangerous world we need to be more aware of what is real and what isn’t.