Media literacy has a wide range of purposes and goals that researchers and educators can work towards to support students to engage in the essential skills for our democratic society. These goals can include: recognizing advertisements versus articles; identifying credible information and sources, among many more. Importantly, many (if not all) of these goals require use of many different skills and high use of cognitive resources. When considering the wide range of goals and the complexity of achieving these goals, it can present a daunting task for researchers and educators. While there is currently high-quality research being conducted which has shown the field numerous strategies to assist students in being smart digital consumers, a concern we have heard from educators is, how do I get my students to consistently do these things? This is a crucial question because if people know what to do, but they do not actually do it then the skill in question really does not serve its utility. Teachers we have worked with have found success in more consistent use by implementing regular skill-building assignments, such as “media literacy Fridays”, where students bring in stories and events to evaluate. Teachers also integrate media literacy skills to current content by evaluating information encountered in class with a different perspective. Ultimately, this matter of utility has and continues to be an important question for education researchers since research just for research sake often does not consider the utility of the work. Importantly, there are groups who work closely with educators, create high quality materials, and do consider utility in their work.
Within the context of media literacy, this matter of utility is especially pertinent since the strategies taught can be used by people every day when they navigate social media, consume television, and navigate the internet more widely. Since people consume so much information on a daily basis, finding skills to utilize also means skills that are easily utilized. When we consider a skill such as lateral reading, a skill that allows students to identify who created the source and consider it’s credibility, we can see something that is highly actionable, quick and easy to do. Simply opening another tab and ‘Googling’ a page, person or group to see what others have said about them. Not only is lateral reading a skill that is easily utilized, but it is also one that is very effective and recent studies have shown that after students learn it, they are likely to use it (Breakstone et al., 2021). Lateral reading is one example of a skill that is effective, and its effectiveness is amplified by its ease of use. This combination is one that is clearly difficult to achieve but should be aspired to as we support students to utlize relevant skills to navigate the media they encounter. This skill and many others are crucial towards civic engagement as well because the actionability of it provides opportunities for students to quickly investigate and find accurate information.
At the Media Literacy Collaborative, an effective way we see to achieve this combination is through teacher/educator led research questions. Educator-led research questions not only have the potential make utility a greater focus, but from a student perspective it also adds a known face to the skill, tool, strategy or new knowledge. Media literacy skills are difficult to integrate given the complexity of the media landscape. By supporting educators in creating research questions this is able to create the potential for more concrete practices and foster a closer relationship between practitioners and researchers. This is not to say that researchers are unable to ask questions that have great utility, media literacy research currently exists that has a focus on utility. However, when research questions originate in the classroom, then there is a greater likelihood that it will make an impact there too. In the context of history, a question that has been asked previously is how do we transfer historical thinking skills to media literacy and vice versa? A teacher we are working has seen how students develop these skills separately but have not transferred that knowledge to the other context. Additional questions we have seen are how do we turn student’s media literacy into sustained civic action, and how do we help students see source quality in different ways?
Research around media literacy and the many topics it relates to such as misinformation, history education and civic engagement are areas with a great amount of potential and room to grow. Importantly, these topics are ones that we see affecting the world today and therefore solutions to these growing issues require a quick response. Because of that, while research does not need to be only focused on use and utility, when researchers are forming which questions to ask, they should not only think what will we learn from answering this question, but also who will this knowledge be helpful to and how?
To start people on their journey to understanding and utilizing media literacy in effective ways, here is a list of the Media Literacy Collaborative’s favorite resources.
Bio:
Joseph worked with preschool and elementary school students both as a teacher and in his research. He is now a doctoral student at UCI’s School of Education. He is interested in mechanisms of misinformation, how it disseminates and how it may disrupt reasoning processes.
With the Media Literacy Collaborative, Joseph is excited to work with educators to attempt to further understand the challenges that misinformation pose in the classroom. By identifying key processes and skills, Joseph is looking to help students and educators become more informed digital consumers and help slow the spread of misinformation.