By RON FIELDS
Post News Network
Hours after the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, social media channels were barraged with misinformation. Photos and videos of fighter jets being downed, videos of explosions, photos of Russian forces parading through the streets of Moscow or Ukrainians praying in the streets — all from years or even decades before February 2022.
These images filled social media feeds across the world and were shared countlessly, fueling misinformation and confusion.
But Ukraine is just one example of the now-constant battle to fight mis- and disinformation online, a problem that has accelerated in recent years. Young people are particularly vulnerable to both believing and sharing false information.
"We are now realizing that the more exposed we are to media, the less we have the tools to deal with all this media content," said Dr. Joseph Erba, strategic communication chair with the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. "With teenagers especially, we just assume since they've been around social media their whole lives that they know how it works."
Erba was quick to point out that youngsters aren't the only ones struggling with media literacy.
"Adults need help too," he said. "It's disheartening to see how easily people can be misinformed."
A 2019 study by Pew Research Center found more than half of the 6,000-plus U.S. adults polled admitted to sharing made-up news — the vast majority telling researchers that they didn't know the information was false or misleading.
More screen time
A recent study by JAMA Pediatrics found that screen time among adolescents grew and astounding four hours a day from pre-pandemic levels — from 3.8 hours a day to 7.7 hours a day.
Each minute added to that figure translates to more and more opportunities young people will be exposed to — and possibly share — misinformation.
"I hesitate to call it fact versus fiction," said Robyn Hartman, information and digital librarian at Fort Hays State University's Forsythe Library. "It's information overload. The more you get hit with difference pieces of information, whether from true news sources or other actors in the field, the less ability you have to distinguish face from an unproven claim or a half-truth or an opinion disguised as news."
There are ample bad actors intentionally creating "fake news" to push an agenda or ideology, Hartman said, making it even more difficult to tell a credible source from a questionable one.
Disseminating false information is nothing new, she added. But in the pre-internet and pre-social media world, that information traveled and spread at an exponentially slower pace.
Media literacy is a critical piece of a new curriculum plan being rolled at at FHSU. While there are no actual "media literacy" courses, the concept of critical thinking and information literacy will be baked into every aspect of coursework.
"There's no magic bullet," she said. "I would love to hand you a checklist, but the big emphasis should be on your critical thinking skills. (Fact-checking tools) can help you make those decisions, but it's only a piece of the puzzle."
Pressing pause
Erbe pleads with his students to slow down on social media — both to help prevent the spread of misinformation and to change one's own behavior on social media.
"From a media literacy perspective, one of the tools that has worked the best is thinking to press pause, take a step back and really consider what you're reading here," he said.
He believes most students entering KU have a "very low level of media literacy."
"The difference I've noted in the classroom is, years ago, students were chatting with each other. Now they are on their phones and even more plugged into media," Erbe said. "The idea of media literacy is not rocket science. The main tenant is to demystify the media, to deconstruct media into pieces small enough we can see what's behind the curtain. If you know how something works, you're less likely to be influenced by it."
He urges his students to use those critical thinking skills prior to blindly believing or sharing what they see on social media — Who is the source? Who is writing it? Where are their credentials? What examples are cited and who is quoted? Is it even a news article?
In the classroom
Jessica Augustine, journalism adviser at Hays High School, said while there is no course specifically focusing on media literacy or misinformation at HHS, "it's part of the stuff we do on a daily basis."
"In 21st Century Journalism, we talk about it — interviewing, balancing sources, finding good sources. I think the kids I have are a bit more aware of the misinformation that's out there. They tend to be more analytical about what they choose," she said. "In general, the student body ... some kids just read whatever is on social media and they take it as fact."
In her 20 years of teaching, Augustine said there have been noticeable behavior changes among young people.
"In my first year ... it was rare for anyone to have a cellphone. Now it's odd if someone doesn't," she said. "I don't think they socialize face-to-face as well.
"And they're constantly barraged with just tons of information. I think it makes it hard for them to sift through and think about it. ... No one can sit there and fact check over and over and over."
Augustine also urges students to stop and think — hit pause — before sharing social media posts.
She referenced a December string of incidents in which students were creating Instagram account to bully and publicly shame fellow students — a chain of events that led to an all-school assembly and candid discussion about the risks of social media.
"When you share those types of things, think before you post," she said.
Arms race
Alex Mahadevan, program manager for the Poytner Institute's MediaWise, said it's important to teach young people to think like fact checkers. He pointed out the significant number of first-time voters in 2018 and 2020 elections — many of them getting a bulk of their news from social media.
"The problem itself has only gotten worse and more widespread. Misinformers are getting better. ... People are becoming more polarized. ... Confirmation bias is a lot stronger than it was in the past," he said. "While the problem is getting worse, we are trying to scale up quickly to keep up with it."
Poytner's Teen Fact-Checking Network has a "newsroom" of teens keeping an eye on social media in an attempt to turn the tide. When a dubious claim is spotted online, these teens will research the subject, write a script and post their findings— either confirming or denying, or noting information is either lacking or taken out of context.
Even though he works in the fact-checking field, he said he has seen misinformation shared by his own family in India via the Facebook messaging tool WhatsApp.
"It's frustrating, because they're not doing it on purpose," Mahadevan said. "But there's only so much fact checkers can do. One content farm in Macedonia could reach 100 million people in a day. ... We've tried to follow misinformation from platform to platform, but it's an arms race."
He also pointed to algorithms used by Facebook/Meta and other social media networks to determine what fills a news feed.
"We're trying to help people understand why they see what they see. It could be curated by an computer algorithm rewarding negative engagement," he said.
Mahadevan said parents need to help their children understand that what they see and share online can have real-world consequences on their future, noting billions of dollars being funneled into climate change denial efforts.
"People are voting for politicians, doing things that are actively harming their future based on disinformation and misinformation online," he said. "Your future is at stake."
Recent changes by Facebook to downplay local news sources in news feeds is "extremely frustrating," Mahadevan added.
"What happens at a local level has such a profound effect on your life compared to memes," he said. "What you (local news organizations) do at a local level has so much of a deeper effect than the things they see on Facebook, which is not doing a good job of amplifying local news."
And with many areas of the country now living within a "news desert" as an increasing number of newspapers close or cut staff, Mahadevan said that lack of local information is worrisome — noting a proper news diet should have local news as its foundation.
"That has been one of the biggest drivers of media illiteracy — the death of local news," he said. "The decline of local news has had a devastating effect on media literacy in the U.S."
Cover image courtesy MediaWise