The concept of “Digital Literacy” refers to the amalgamation of ones ability to acquire, process, and disseminate information via digital mediums or platforms. The importance of developing this skill set at a young age, and continuing to hone it throughout the education journey is rapidly becoming more and more critical as the world continues to shift from more traditional forms of information sharing to increasingly fast paced digital exchange. While there are many avenues of investigative and educational opportunities when it comes to learning digital literacy, I feel the topic most pertinent to my own interests is in the analysis and interpretation of bias and reliability of news articles found online.
It seems that I hear the comment more and more as time goes by, “I don’t watch the news, I don’t even have cable anymore! I just watch Netflix, and read my news online.” The problem, as I see it, is how often do we really question the sources of news we find online? Are they being written by a reliable author? What sort of biases affiliated with the network are being brought into the narrative of the story? What are the strategies we can employ when informing ourselves about current events to ensure that the information we are getting is accurate, and presented in such a way that we can formulate our own honest opinion about the topic? With these questions in mind, this blog entry is intended to provide access to a couple of resources that I have found, as well as a couple that I regularly use which provide extremely useful tools for the collection and interpretation/analysis of news and data from the muddy waters of the digital sea.
- The News Literacy Project or NLP ( https://newslit.org/ ) The NLP is a database of programs and resources that advise both educators and students on making responsible and intelligent choices in their consumption and reiteration of online information. It has useful tools such as quizzes and guides, such as an article titled “Sanitise Before You Share” which is a four point “sanatisation” system to be used prior to sharing information found online. This system includes checking if a fact check has been done, gauging how intensely your emotions are feeding into your initial response and thereby influencing the way you might share the information, doing a quick tertiary search to verify similarly available information, and asking directly for the source of the information. There are tabs to navigate to spaces of the web-page dedicated to educators, the general public, as well as a global education. The density and availability of informative articles, and tools provided by NLP is absolutely worth checking out!
- Lingro ( http://lingro.com/ )
Lingro is an online resource freely available to anyone with internet access. What it allows the user to do, is to input the address of a web-page they are viewing, and Lingro will reopen the page in a version that allows the individual to click on any word on the screen to get several definitions on the word, and other useful information. Lingro is also able to translate into eleven major languages, with a dictionary containing over eight million translations. This is an extremely useful tool for use when reading articles with unfamiliar words, or concepts, and also allows readers to access content written in languages they are not familiar with, allowing for a more holistic information gathering skill-set. - Snopes.com ( https://www.snopes.com/ )Snopes.com is a nonpartisan fact checking site which is a derivative of Snopes Media Group. Snopes started in 1994, and is the oldest and largest fact checking database available online. Users are able to query topics relating to current, or historical events, and find available information pertaining to the accuracy of the claims. Using this tool is extremely useful when attempting to verify information being postulated by unfamiliar (or familiar) parties, and sources.
- Interactive Media Bias Chart ( https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart-2/ )This interactive chart is an online tool that operates on an X/Y axis, where X represents political bias, and Y represents overall source reliability. Popular news networks are then categorised onto the chart based on these parameters, so that the user can identify and approach articles presented by these networks with the appropriate lens.
Digital literacy, as both a theory and a practice, are becoming exponentially more important with the global shift to digitisation. By compiling a tool set of resources, it is my intention to not only enrich my own information gathering, and educational practices, but also to provide other learners with access to reliable means by which they may do the same.
Thank you.
Works Cited
The coolest dictionary known to hombre! (n.d.). Retrieved September 23, 2020, from http://lingro.com/
Interactive Media Bias Chart – 2. (2020, September 01). Retrieved September 23, 2020, from https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart-2/
News Literacy Project. (2020, September 22). Retrieved September 23, 2020, from https://newslit.org/
Snopes.com. (2020, September 16). Retrieved September 23, 2020, from https://www.snopes.com/