Teaching Social Media in a Post-Truth Era

As a teacher of first year composition, I believe (like all teachers) that students need to read and be exposed to high-quality, complex arguments written by reputable sources. This seems more important than ever given our recent election in which teachers, academics, and “the media” are decrying our “post-truth” world (Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 “word of the year”) in which the truth is not nearly as important as one’s personal or emotional beliefs. Because most of my students are coming of age in this atmosphere, one of my most important obligations is to expand their knowledge through the use of quality sources. While I never ask my students to personally agree or disagree with what they are reading, we still sit down to evaluate source using a series of quality tests. This test assesses measures including the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose (often referred to as the CRAAP test).  

In attempting to meet the educational goals that I believe are important for my students, I have often shied away from discussing social media as part of our conversations on source evaluation. This is mostly because I recognize that student knowledge of social media vastly outstrips mine, but it is also because studies have shown that students spend somewhere around fifty minutes a day on Facebook alone, and far more than that behind screens throughout the day (Stewart). Therefore, my previous goal was to move students a bit further away from social media and towards other more critically engaging forms of media.

That goal changed near the end of last year when I was astonished to learn that a majority of Americans get at least some of their news from social media (Gottfried and Shearer). Less astonishing but even more problematic is the fact that some of that news is fake or helps to create echo chambers in which readers fail to see political beliefs and arguments of their opponents. Most of us are versed at least a bit with Eli Pariser’s argument on filter bubbles, in which he points out that websites such as Facebook rely on algorithms to examine the stories users click on (or the stories users closest friends have read) and offers news based upon these clicks in their news feed (37-38). Such a system is increasingly allowing fake news or filter bubbles to proliferate, and can be very damaging to those who do use social media as a primary source of news.

So what is a teacher of media and critical reading and thinking to do? We certainly can’t get our students off of social media, nor do most of us want to – it remains an excellent tool for literacy engagement. However, I am only beginning to wrap my head around how to teach students to be critical readers of social media. Some ideas that I have so far involve going well beyond the CRAAP test – we have to assume students will be well off the beaten path of The New York Times when they are assessing stories. We will have to work with students to pull media and stories from their social media for analysis as a first step. We have to begin to help them understand that their media and forms of literacy matter and can change things as important as an election.

Additionally, my goals for this year are reinforcing student understanding of all news as a product of a creator – someone who may have left out certain facts or viewpoints. We will discuss the biases seen in articles, both those that appear visible and those that may be unconscious. We will have more discussions about power and authority and how both the creator and the audience must see beyond the face value of the message to analyze what issues of power are at play and what the creator has to gain from that production. We will see if we can confirm news on other sites and discuss how these stories have been “spun.” We will talk about the filter bubble and try to unearth examples of it. We will talk about the importance of social media and other platforms as transformative spaces for both professional journalists and for people like students to be creators and transmitters of news and the power and responsibility that this brings. I may also change my end-of-term creative project, traditionally a remixing of an argument essay into a visual form, into one in which they are the creators of social media news and must acknowledge their biases, their audiences, and their power as a creator.

Undoubtedly, developing a curriculum around the new challenges that social media news brings to the classroom will be an ongoing process, as social media certainly changes faster than our teaching can. However, developing such a curriculum is of the utmost importance. Learning to engage productively in social media and Web 2.0 goes well beyond an individual need to develop solid literacy practices, but is also important for an American democracy that prides itself upon first amendment rights of free speech and freedom of the press. As our interaction with media is rapidly changing, we must prepare our students to be thoughtful and engaged readers and thinkers now more than ever. Yet I am hopeful that our students are prepared and excited to face these new media challenges and will work with us to create the type of literacy and media education that they as digital natives need.

Works Cited

Gottfried, Jeffrey and Elisa Shearer. “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016.” Pew Research Center, 26 May 2016. http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/05/PJ_2016.05.26_social-media-and-news_FINAL-1.pdf

Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing what We Read and How We Think. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.

Stewart, James. “Facebook Has 50 Minutes of Your Time Each Day. It Wants More.” The New York Times, 5 May 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/business/facebook-bends-the-rules-of-audience-engagement-to-its-advantage.html.

Comments

I enjoy reading this thoughtful idea. This is a teacher’s idea who really concerns about student educational progress. In the past, she preferred that her students be taken apart from social medias; she thought that they dedicate a significant portion of their daily time to social medias. But, sometimes about last year, she has changed her mind when she realized that based on survey most of American get some part of their news through social medias and many of them such as Facebook which works base on Algorithm can distribute a fake or biased news. This fake news caused individuals cannot see the reality. Thus, she came to an idea that it is good to teach our students to read news critically and analyzed them. Students should know that each news has a creator which might have some unconscious biases or sometimes creator might have lost some viewpoints. Students should also realize an important role that power play in creating a news and try to confirm it from other resources.  I think all these comments very useful, but a little hard to really teach to every single student to read critically or find out the biases inside the news. Because it is possible that some students have the same bias as the creator of news has. Thus, they really cannot understand the bias. I think confirming the news with other sources is a better idea. But, the important point is media scholars should attempt to optimize their use of this online sphere to inform other individuals about different issues such as politics, social, etc.      

I enjoy reading this thoughtful idea. This is a teacher’s idea who really concerns about student educational progress. In the past, she preferred that her students be taken apart from social medias; she thought that they dedicate a significant portion of their daily time to social medias. But, sometimes about last year, she has changed her mind when she realized that based on survey most of American get some part of their news through social medias and many of them such as Facebook which works base on Algorithm can distribute a fake or biased news. This fake news caused individuals cannot see the reality. Thus, she came to an idea that it is good to teach our students to read news critically and analyzed them. Students should know that each news has a creator which might have some unconscious biases or sometimes creator might have lost some viewpoints. Students should also realize an important role that power play in creating a news and try to confirm it from other resources.  I think all these comments very useful, but a little hard to really teach to every single student to read critically or find out the biases inside the news. Because it is possible that some students have the same bias as the creator of news has. Thus, they really cannot understand the bias. I think confirming the news with other sources is a better idea. But, the important point is media scholars should attempt to optimize their use of this online sphere to inform other individuals about different issues such as politics, social, etc.      

I understand how easy it is to get caught up in fake news. If we see something that agrees with what we are thinking, of course, we want that validation and may seek it without actually thinking about the sources. However, I do not think that fake news is the only problem. Cable news networks allow us to pick and choose what information we want to see and whose viewpoints we want to hear. Gone are the days that news had to present both sides of the issue they are reporting. For this reason, news is no longer fair and balanced. Even stations that claim to be (fair and balanced) have a bias. I don't know how we combat that without teaching individuals to critique the sources they are reading and investigate to find out if it is true. While we all want to think that we do these things, there are times that we take short cuts and believe a story before we should. However, I feel we do this with research also.  Do we really stop to think about the sources we are using for our resources?  Even if they are peer reviewed - they can still hold biases depending on who wrote them, when they were written, and the interests of those involved. It is important to stop for just a moment and use these same considerations on our work. Are we actually looking at it from all angles, taking into account all the things we should?  Maybe that is how we found ourselves in this problem with fake news after all.  It is far too easy to just take someone's word for it, especially if we feel they are smarter or more knowledgeable on a subject.  We should never be afraid to question EVERYTHING!! 

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