Media Literacy in Social Media

We live in a media saturated world where the average internet user is spending 145 minutes per day on social media with 1.85 billion of these users logging onto Facebook daily, our number one Twitter account influencer is @TheRealDonaldTrump who was flagged multiple times for misinformation and where 94% of marketers use social media to promote their brand/company (Statista, 2021). While many people still rely on traditional media of television for their news, the same people are logging on and sharing sensational headlines and bizarre claims without thinking twice. Some may think fake news begins and ends with politics, but it can just as easily apply to a product scam; a link that looks like an article but instead prompts you to make a purchase. The term fake news tends to be used in the context of politics, but has become an umbrella term to encompass misinformation, disinformation or propaganda. Fake news is relatively only 0.15% of American’s media diet, yet the issue is how large of an impact fake, misleading and inaccurate news of any kind holds over legitimate, accurate news (Science Advances, 2020).

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As the digital platform becomes the dominant means for news, information searches and purchases, we face the reality of having to want to educate ourselves to actively cipher through what is and is not accurate information. We should be questioning the intent and the creator of every post we read/share to determine its credibility through aspects of trustworthiness and bias. Scholars suggest the issue goes beyond the need for education, it ultimately requires a change in consumer behavior. As learned in my Public Opinion and Persuasion course, media literacy would begin with combating cognitive miserliness, which is the human preference to use simpler, easier ways of solving problems than those requiring more thought and effort. Even after being educated on media literacy, we have to fight the natural behavior of choosing the easy route, which would not be double-checking our posts before we reshare them.

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Ideally, we would live in a digital world where algorithms solved all our problems. As you entered a website, you could have the option to turn on a “fake news blocker” just as you do an ad-blocker. Prior to sharing a post, you may get flashed with a message from a fact-checking software warning you that there are potential false claims. However, it is some of the algorithms to blame for feeding us these sensational headlines and faulty product advertisements. 

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Early in our academics at lower education levels, we are instructed to not use Wikipedia as it is popularly known for allowing the public to edit the articles’ information. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not the only site of misinformation. In my college level information science classes, we base our searches and findings from scholarly articles that we still evaluate before deeming them as credible sources. The same evaluation tips I have learned through my information science classes can be applied to debunking social media posts. However, cognitive miserliness indicates that the steps to a full critical evaluation of a scholarly article, as it is extensive and detailed. It is unlikely that this evaluation will be conducted every time a Facebook user reads “COVID vaccine side-effects may include death” before they have already shared it to one hundred of their closest friends. Yet, these criteria can be condensed to quick tips and easy to spot identifiers to effectively deem the credibility of social media articles.

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My previous insights consistently uphold the idea that the public needs effective communication, the public needs easily digestible information and that it can be accomplished through proper presentation and format. It brings me to the concept of native advertising, learned through my media analysis course. Native advertising are ads that flow and fit the format of the designated social media platform to look like original content rather than an ad. This design draws consumers to “like” or “share”, creating promotion and exposure without feeling they are being targeted. As it works for marketers promoting business, it would work for creating a successful social media campaign that circulates awareness and provides education on media literacy in determining the credibility and trustworthiness of online articles and websites. The users who are likely to be drawn to click-bait, are the ones needing to be informed so this strategy would target the desired audience. Once they click the post, rather than it be the article or product they think they are about to view, it will display a simplistic information graphic that reads quick tips and trips to media literacy, provide links to fact check websites, a call of action to share the post and a link to a more detailed read if interested.