Robotrolling 2019/3
The RAND Corporation published a follow-up to their 2016 report on Truth Decay. They define Truth Decay as the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in today’s political and civil discourse. The new study, titled, “Exploring Media Literacy Education as a Tool for Mitigating Truth Decay,” attempts to inform efforts to apply media literacy education as a countermeasure to Truth Decay. Increasing media literacy is a common recommendation to countering disinformation as the reliance on facts, data, and analysis decreases, the potential space for disinformation to enter the narrative grows, as does its potential to be shared and spread.
Broadly defined, media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate media messages in a variety of forms. Media literacy education teaches participants to consider the implications of message construction from numerous angles, including motivation, framing, potential bias and how to determine the credibility of authors and sources. Properly taught, media literacy can potentially help participants gauge what sources to trust, decrease participation in disinformation loops, and could even help rebuild trust in institutions.
One of this study’s most important findings is that context matters. They found that media literacy competency is highly individualistic and based on numerous contextual factors. Thus, improving media literacy education must be designed with enough flexibility for educators to adapt it to their needs. Further, it is important that media literacy teaches participants how to think and not what to think. The study also recommends greater collaboration between the various disciplines studying media literacy. Developing commonalities and overarching definitions can help form a basis for research and practice.
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