Modern Literacy: Politics

Literacy and Civil Participation by Olivia Brown

With the advancements and accessibility of both AI and social media in general, it’s more important than ever to teach young students how to navigate the boundless information they encounter on the internet. This becomes particularly relevant with curated and personalized algorithms that many social media platforms now use to capture their audience, increasing the chances for confirmation bias. There is no doubt that these “bubbles” on the internet can have a great impact on our emotions, perceptions, and beliefs. Empowering students to think critically about modern media and the content found on it can happen in every classroom by developing comprehensive literacy skills. 

Colloquially, the term “literacy” is applied to simple reading and writing, but it goes far beyond that; it is often situated in the content area, resulting in specific types of literacy.  Considering the aforementioned rise in technology, it is not surprising that digital media literacy is being considered the “modern-day literacy”. This definition from National Association of Media Literacy Education resonated with me: media literacy education “represents a necessary, inevitable, and realistic response to the complex, ever-changing electronic environment and communication cornucopia surrounding us”.

Think about all the information you saw on social media during this election. Polls, percentages, graphs, charts, campaign ads, memes, AI generated content, and more. You could hardly get away because it was on every screen and the sources varied from individual commentators, satirical media networks, and news agencies, often intermixed and occasionally indistinguishable, especially for vulnerable audiences. Media literacy is not only understanding the message of the media itself, which is inherently interdisciplinary, but also critically thinking about the source and their potential motivations or biases. 

Due to the diverse set of skills needed to evaluate the constant media content we as a society encounter, media literacy skills should be introduced early in education and incorporated into each academic subject. This is common in English Language Arts, Social Studies, and other humanities based courses. Teaching about historical advertisements, writing genres, and tone can easily be connected and applied to modern digital media. 

I personally found that news headlines were a great teaching tool in a language classroom, and discussing their structure and context more thoroughly can also be a great activity to enhance media literacy skills. Many times, and I am guilty of this myself as a busy student, young people will read the news by just skimming through headlines. But, when you take a look at headlines from sources of differing political leanings, it’s easy to see why they might be misleading. Let’s look at different headlines after Kamala Harris’s interview on Fox News. 

Each carefully worded headline describes a different perception of Harris, and depending which article you happen to come across while scrolling on your phone, it may shape your view of the situation and her performance. But if you see and compare all three, and potentially even take the time to view the original interview itself, you will have a much fuller picture and can come to your own conclusions, whatever those may be. Encouraging students to go beyond the headline, investigate the content critically, and compare different sources beyond their personal algorithm, or “bubble”, can help them explore and develop their own identity and beliefs. 

But the media doesn’t just use headlines, quotes, and verbal commentary, it also uses data and math, such as statistics, percentages, and graphical representations. Students can understand how words can be misconstrued or misleading, but numbers? Numbers don’t lie!