26 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY october 17-23, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com History & Civics Project at UC Santa Cruz, starts by distributing a grid for participants to complete a social media diary. In the past 24 hours, which sites did they visit, for how long, and what did they do there—post, share, like, doomscroll? The key takeaway in module after module of learning is a surprisingly simple trick: Pause. “It’s so important to stop before you share,” Martin tells the students. “I encourage you to be more careful and critical on social media.” This is where contemporary times are unique—media literacy as an umbrella term not just for how to be discerning as a consumer of media, but also as a curator or producer of media. Part of the objective of media literacy training is to encourage people not to inadvertently share misinformation and help it go viral. “Pause and stop and think. If we could all be just a little more reflective, it would get us a long way,” Martin says. The History & Civics project educates educators, focused on history and civics education in K-12 California schools. (AB 873 will provide guidance on teaching media literacy across all major subjects, history included.) “It’s not a new idea that we need informed and educated people in our democracy to make the democracy work and make it more democratic,” Martin says. “The goal is not whoever fools the most people wins. The idea is that we are working for the public good, and that means everybody.” With a quickly changing media landscape (see: the internet), teachers are seeking guidance on how to teach media literacy in the classroom—and how to do it without being political. Instead, the mission of the evolving curricula will be to get students to be critical thinkers in a world full of misinformation and disinformation, to recognize the lies and manipulations. “We are helping students learn how to think, not necessarily what to think,” Martin says. Classroom examples work best when they are not politically charged. For example, according to Martin and Gomez: “Was there really a shark in the middle of a highway?” is a better question for real engagement and critical thinking than “Did Russia influence the American election?” The idea is not that educational institutions alone are responsible for creating an engaged, thriving, functioning democratic society. There are responsibilities for producers of content (which is, increasingly, all of us) and for consumers of content. But schools are already at the front line of how to teach people to think critically, and AB 873 will expand and more clearly articulate how that looks. Monterey County Office of Education increased its emphasis on digital citizenship and media literacy during the pandemic, when students were learning remotely. (MCOE is a member of the local coalition, and on Oct. 9, hosted a media literacy forum focused on technologies such as AI and social media for educators.) “You are not going to have a well informed citizenry if our young people—and adults, for that matter—don’t have a good skill set to critically analyze all the various sources of information that come their way,” says Monterey County Superintendent of Schools Deneen Guss. “The cornerstone of our democracy is based on a well informed citizenry.” There is a difference between skepticism and distrust. The objective is not to sow generalized distrust—in fact media literacy is largely about restoring trust in credible sources of information. Likewise, the objective is not for people to stop asking critical questions—instead to empower them to responsibly fact check government’s spokespeople or candidates’ campaign promises. It’s to pause and think about our trust or distrust, our biases, and to allow ourselves to think critically. This applies not just to when we are scrolling through social media, or reading newspapers or deciding who to vote for. The aspiration is that it also applies when we are in conversation with each other, rolling around ideas, disagreeing and learning. Guss observes these forces at play at her own family gatherings, where her 35-year-old son, an aerospace engineer and a Democrat, will debate issues with her brother, a successful business owner and a Republican. Both men, she says, are “brilliant.” When they disagree, they will ask: Where did you read that? And then look up the source, and discuss whether it’s credible. “That’s the beauty of this, we can have these amazing, critical debates and leave the table with respect,” Guss says. The kind of information sharing and cross-checking that works at the dining room table works in a democratic society, as well: “Whether you are making decisions about your health or who to vote for, you have to know how to dig deep and do critical analysis to be a good decision-maker,” Guss adds. “If we don’t know how to do that, our world’s going to be in a world of hurt.” A Critical Lens: How Media Literacy Combats Disinformation panel discussion takes place at 6:308pm Monday, Oct. 21. The Press Club, 1123 Fremont Blvd., Seaside. Free. For more information, email misinfodayca@gmail.com. Play The Euphorigen Investigation game online at lokisloop.org/games. Glossary of Terms Misinformation: Information that is misleading, erroneous or false. It is generally shared (and sometimes created) by people who are unaware that it’s inaccurate. Disinformation: Information that is deliberately created or shared with the intention to deceive or mislead others, usually to achieve a desired ideological, political or financial result. Fake news: An umbrella term with a non-specific meaning, popularized by former president Donald Trump, usually used to discredit sources. In this case, it is meant to widely discredit legitimate media organizations for reporting the news. Media literacy: Also known as “information literacy,” this refers to the ability of a consumer (or curator or creator) of information to think analytically about its truthfulness, content and intent. Lateral reading: A technique of leaving the source you are reading and consulting other sources to learn more, including from a source cited in the original article. In practice, for online reading, it means leaving the website you are reading and opening new tabs to read what other outlets are saying, if anything, about the same information. Bias: Allowing our opinions to shape our views. Confirmation bias in this context refers to selecting media articles or information that reinforce what we are already inclined to think, rather than challenge our opinions. Clickbait: Sensational, at times misleading, information and headlines designed to generate attention (usually measured in clicks or shares) rather than to share factual information. AI-generated: Content— whether text, visual images or audio—produced by computers based on data gathered from already-existing information. Also known as “synthetic media.” Deepfake: A persuasive image, audio or video that utilizes AI to make it appear as if someone has said or done something they have not done. Deepfakes are increasingly indistuinguishable from otherwise real media with current technology. Sources: News Literacy Project, EU DisinfoLab, History & Civics Project at UC Santa Cruz, Misinfo Day “Media Literacy Week serves as an opportunity to promote essential skills, ensuring students are prepared to be informed, responsible and engaged digital citizens,” Monterey County Superintendent of Schools Deneen Guss says. “We will get back to a fact-based society.”
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