Media Literacy

Media literacy is the ability to access, understand, analyze, evaluate, and create media in a critical and informed way. By media we’re referring to any channel or method of communication. This includes (but isn’t limited to):

• Books
• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Radio/podcasts
• Television
• Movies
• Videos
• Websites
• Social media

As you can see, you encounter media all the time in your everyday life. And whether it’s fictional or non-fictional content, it’s all helping to shape your view of the world. Therefore, being able to apply critical thinking when engaging with this content is vital.

This book will be focusing primarily on non-fictional content, but it’s still important to know that media literacy also applies to fictional content. In practice, good media literacy can look like:

Developed by Mike Caulfield, the SIFT method is a simple and straightforward way to investigate the credibility of information, particularly for online sources. The steps are:

Stop

Before reading or sharing content, STOP!

With everything going on in a typical day, it’s very easy to be in a state where you’re passively engaging with media. But passive engagement means we’re likely not scrutinizing the content or ourselves to the level we should be when this type of information is presented.

Taking a moment to stop lets you switch to a more active engagement, where you can more specifically exercise your media literacy skills, such as:

• Evaluating the emotional content of an article
• Assessing your own emotional state as you’re reading
• Thinking about what you already know on the topic

Investigate the source

Take a moment to look up the author, website, etc of the content you’re engaging with. In particular, look for things like:

• Does the source likely have an ideological bias or goal in mind?
• Does the source have any authority on the topic being discussed?

Find better coverage

It’s important to see what other sources are saying about the same claim or topic. Try to find other credible sources that either:

• Corroborate the information or claim
• Dispute the information or claim

Additionally, it’s often a good idea to see if credible, non-partisan fact-checking sites have already covered the article or content. These can include:

• Snopes.com
• FactCheck.org
• Politifact.com

Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to Their Original Source

Articles will frequently make claims based on other second-hand information, such as:

• Academic studies
• Quotes from other people, groups, and articles
• Visuals such as graphs, photos, or videos

However, it’s not uncommon for articles to misrepresent these things. This could mean:

• Improperly summarizing the findings of a study
• Taking a quote out of context
• Using visuals out of context

It’s important to try to find the primary source of content like the above, and ask yourself questions like:

• Do the conclusions drawn by the author(s) of a study match the claims that were made in the article referencing the study?
• Did a referenced quote come from the person the article claimed it did? Was the way the article used that quote fair to the context the quote came from?
• Are the visuals that are used actually directly related to the content discussed in the article? Did the article edit anything out of the original piece of media that was important?