Sunday, February 23, 2014

Media Literacy

Principles for a New Media Literacy by Dan Gillmor brought about a new perspective on the media and the need for critical evaluation of the media. I have discussed this topic before, but in the past, discussions I have had (both in the classroom and outside of it) about evaluation of the media have centered mostly around how different people are portrayed in the media based on gender, religion, nationality, etc. Obviously, there are news sources I trust and others I don't, but I had never considered that to be a part of a kind of literacy. However, after reading Principles for a New Media Literacy, I see how this is a topic of extreme importance, and how it can impact our everyday lives. I kept finding myself thinking about social media in particular when it came to thinking about evaluating news and news sources. I think many people, especially many people around my age and younger, rely heavily on social media for news, and whether that is a good thing or not is not as important as how reliable the information people are extracting from these sources is. An article from Huffington Post entitled Social Media Trust, Credibility and Reputation Management discusses this issue, as does Social Media as a Credible News Source from New York Women in Communications. Both articles talk about the importance of trust on media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, and how important it is to evaluate that trust and understand whether or not the information we receive from these sources is legitimate.

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