8 tips and tools for staying media literate in 2020
Over the last 4 years the concept of ‘fake news’ has come to the fore in our social conscious. However, beyond President Trump’s use of the phrase, there has undoubtedly been a surge in misinformation around the world, particularly across media and social media platforms. This has never been so relevant as during the COVID-19 Pandemic where misinformation has caused the deaths of thousands, whether its people dying from alcohol poisoning in Iran, people being poisoned when drinking bleach or simply the thousands of people who have contracted the virus because of a belief that it isn’t serious or that social distancing is ineffective.
This is not to lay the blame on these victims. It is extremely difficult to tell truth from lie at the best of times, but it is especially difficult online, and especially difficult when we have not been taught or educated in how to discern the truth online. We would not expect a child to be able to drive a car before having lessons, similarly we should not expect everyone to be able to critically engage with media without first being trained in how to do so. Media literacy, like any other form of literacy is a skill that needs to learned. This article, while being no replacement for actual training, seeks to equip us with skills and tools that can help make us more media literate and thus more capable of engaging with media and social media positively and critically.
1. Fact Checking
Perhaps the most obvious skill we need to be media literate is to fact check everything we see/hear. As we have seen in the Brexit referendum, the 2017 and 2019 elections as well as in the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a myriad of attacks and lies being made from across the political spectrum. Alongside these lies are claims that are perhaps factually true, but completely taken out of context or deliberately mislead and deceptive. It is incredibly important that we do not take claims at face value and we research whether they are true, or the nuances that almost always exist around them.
That is a big ask and a lot of work to do. Fortunately there are tools and organisations that help us do that. Full Fact is one such organisation that I subscribe to. Full Fact are an independent charity that researches political claims and statements and exposes lies, nuances claims and put statistics used by politicians and the public into their right context. You can subscribe to them at https://fullfact.org/ or follow them on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. There are other fact checking organisations like BBC Reality Check, askforevidence.org and the government provide a checklist when looking at information online which can be found here https://sharechecklist.gov.uk/.
2. Reduce political statements
Particularly in politics, there is a tendency when making statements to be vague and open-ended. Often times there is much confusion about what politicians actually mean. This issues has been particularly relevant in the COVID-19 context where clarity is vital and can be life or death for people. When reading political statements it is incredibly important to be aware of this and try to cut through the jargon to get to the point being made. Similar to fact checking however, this can be incredibly difficult, particularly when statements are taken out of context. This is the purpose of media in society, to reduce the politics and scrutinise it on behalf of the public. However, like politicians, media outlets have their own biases and convoluting practices.
While ultimately what is needed is critical thinking from us as the public when engaging with the news and media there are some tools that are useful. I subscribe and follow an organisation called Simple Politics. SP are a charity that seeks to reduce politics and simplify it as much as possible while not ignoring nuance and context. They give useful information like how political processes work like Parliament. They also provide content on different political ideologies and philosophy such as socialism, capitalism, fascism, etc. Finally they publish articles and information about current events/issues that make them as simple to understand. While it is impossible to be completely objective or unbiased, Simple Politics do a wonderful job at removing the bias and jargon out of politics. For more information you can find them here at http://www.simplepolitics.co.uk/ or on most social media platforms.
If you are unsure what biases a political party may have or politically what direction they lean, a great tool is Political Compass. They are a charity that provides information on where political parties are situated on the political compass and do analyses on individual elections and so you can see what direction each party has been going in. You can find them here https://www.politicalcompass.org/about. Equipped with this information we able to be more critical of political parties, both our own and other ones.
3. Understand media bias/vested interests
Like political parties, media outlets have their own vested interests and biases which are incredibly important to understand when interacting with them. It is also incredibly important to understand that those biases will come out in their writing and production of material. For instance, most news outlets are privately owned, which means that as enterprises they are trying to maximise profits. This means that they have a priority on getting people reading them to generate that income, even to the point that they will sacrifice integrity and accuracy to get attention. This means that headlines are susceptible to be sensationalised and attention grabbing, even if they are not accurate or reduce an issue. Similarly, if a newspaper is owned by someone who has investments in a certain industry, that newspaper is unlikely to publish articles that criticise that industry.
If you are disseminating truth from media articles, it is vital that you know who owns that media outlet and what are their vested interests. Sometimes this can be difficult as ownership is often complicated and convoluted. However, there are tools which can help. I use a Chrome extension and app called Newsguard. Newsguard rates websites on how trustworthy they are and gives them a score out of 100 when you click on the website. They then provide a breakdown of the score and why a website may or may not have more points. They also provide background information to websites such as who owns them, how they are financed, what content they create, their credibility, transparency and history. As with any of the other tools I have mentioned, Newsguard will have their own biases and should be used critically. However, it is transparent in the tools that it uses to evaluate media platforms as well as they ways in which it is funded and run as an organisation. To install Newsguard or learn more about it got to their website https://www.newsguardtech.com/.
4. Understand political interests
Every political party and politician will claim to be honest and have integrity. However true this is, what is categorically true is that every politician and political party has an agenda and biases. This is true because they are human and every human and human organisation have agendas and biases. While I am not saying that all politicians are equally biased or false (there are politicians who have integrity and those who are chronically deceitful), it important that when seeing the communication of parties and politicians that they have biases and so will skew the truth that they present (whether consciously or unconsciously).
Once we understand that truth, we can begin to critically analyse the material that parties and governments produce and better understand what is being said. One common example of this is the political parties posting videos of PMQs where the Prime Minister or the opposition say something powerful or meaningful. When the video is posted in isolation we can easily be mislead to believe that the party in question made a strong political point and the other was without response. However, when we understand the biases present we can understand that those quotes were taken out of context and that the other party had a very well-reasoned response. This knowledge is particularly important in times of elections or referendums when parties are a lot less concerned with their own work and much more concerned with winning votes and peoples support.
5. Get your news sources from a variety of places
While it is sometimes easy to see the biases in other people or media outlets it is incredibly difficult to be aware of our own biases. In fact, the nature of subjectivity means that it is impossible to 100% be aware of our own biases. However, we can recognise our biases to a degree and the more we do this, the more we are equipped to engage with others who disagree with us humbly and an open mind, something that politics is in dire need of. One way of doing this is recognising the biases in the news sources we use and then exploring news sources that have different biases. When we approach the same issue from multiple angles it allows us to understand the situation more fully as well as helps us understand the people with different views from our own. Understanding others perspectives is the first step to disagreeing well and finding middle ground from which to cooperate with each other.
I challenge you to look at the news from websites and sources that are different from the ones you traditionally use. I am not saying you have to agree with them but try to understand why the may be making such claims about an issue. If you are not sure where different news sources are situated on the political spectrum there are organisations that have published their findings on where media outlets land politically. All Sides and Market Watch are two US based organisations that provide this information. While they are more geared towards the US they do give information and graphs that include major British news outlets found on these two links. https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-biased-is-your-news-source-you-probably-wont-agree-with-this-chart-2018-02-28. If you are not sure where you land politically and where your biases might exist, or where your party falls, Political Compass provides that information.
6. Talk to people you disagree with
Alongside researching and reading from news sources that you disagree with it is incredibly important to have conversations with people who are different from you. In todays political climate there is less and less respect for those of a different political ideology from ourselves. With the advent of social media it is also becoming increasingly hard to meet and engage with people from different backgrounds and political opinions. It is vital to healthy political discourse to talk with people who are different from us and disagree with us so that we might learn from them and encourage cooperation and tolerance.
While this practice is healthy for us generally it also is a very important tool in our arsenal for interacting with the media. The nature of news gathering since the advent of Google, Facebook and Twitter (where most of us see the bulk of our political opinions and news) is that our own news world becomes smaller and smaller. The algorithms that these platforms use naturally force us into the niches of people that we think like. It is unlikely that if you are a left wing, Guardian reading Corbynite that you will naturally come across the Facebook Page High Tory Memes for Anglo Gang Teens. By talking with and engaging with friends who are politically different from us we have a better insight into the media world they engage with, both in terms of news and socially. In seeing how different the media worlds are of our friends we also become aware of how insular our own social media lives can be, which are often the places where our political opinions are formed or solidified.
7. Follow sources to their fullest
As mentioned above, social media platforms have now become the most widely used sources of news and information. This has its numerous perks such as empowering individuals to share their experience widely in ways that were previously inaccessible to them. However, there are specific dangers that exist in using social media platforms. One such danger is the ease at which we can share false news. Social media platforms are designed so that posts are best digested in a couple seconds, rather than over a long time. This design is what keeps us scrolling and scrolling on our phones digesting a lot of material quickly. Alongside this, posts, particularly shared posts from news sights are all uniform in design. This means that someone sharing an article from the most reputable news source looks presentationally identical to an article written by a 10 year old on their personal blog. This is not to berate 10 year olds, but it means that all sharered news sources are visually given the same authenticity. This alone would not be a problem, but when paired with the design that means posts are usually engaged with briefly and not critically means that the capacity for misinformation is rife on social media. This also further exacerbates the issue of sensationalised headlines that was mentioned earlier. This all leads to the mass production of mistruths and lies that run rampant online.
While there is a lot that the platforms themselves and governments can do to tackle this problem, as mentioned in my other article on media regulation (link), there is also a lot we can do to tackle this. Namely, when reading or sharing any posts on social media, always read through the website article fully and use the above tools to critically analyse this. This may seem obvious, but it is incredibly easy to just hit retweet or share on our Instagram stories. However, what is more difficult is to read through the posts and articles you see shared even when we are not intending on sharing them. As mentioned earlier, we digest the information most naturally within seconds. However, if we see a false article being shared, unless we take the time to read it and critically think about it we will either internalise that post subconsciously as truth or as a lie. What I am recommending is lifestyle which consumes much less social media, but consumes it more fully and critically allowing for more control in the content which you internalise.
8. Get Training
While hopefully we have given you some tools and ways of thinking that will help you to more critically think about media information that you encounter, they are just tips and tools. Ultimately, there is no replacement for genuine training that equips you to engage with the internet proactively and confidently. In school, we are educated on how to read literature critically and approach mathematical problems critically. We need the same rigorous teaching and instruction on how to approach the media critically. Organisations like Shout Out UK (https://www.shoutoutuk.org/) offer free materials to read, watch and listen to as well as running political literacy courses. Other organisations like ThinkCit offer in person teaching sessions on how to engage with media, particularly in the political sphere. With the advent of the internet we are in a whole new world of information and we need to educated and armed to deal with the problems that exist and utilise the amazing capacity that the internet gives us.