Media Literacy

 Misleading information. Nowadays we see it everywhere on every media app there is known to mankind. We see it every day about any sort of topic but the problem is what we do with this information and how do we know that it is misleading? 

62% of people surveyed are concerned about misleading information online but what do the big media companies do with the misleading information. Well, Digital media companies such as Facebook and Microsoft signed up to the EC Code of Practice On Disinformation. With this, they made a code check which is essentially a report by researchers assessing compliance with code. This was put in place so that consumers such as us are able to fact check to see if the information we read is real. Among companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft there was an amazing development in the fight against ''decoding'' information. We as people can essentially be very gullible in what we see online. As media has become such a huge part of our lives we see any sort of information and instantly believe it. Being able to use a fact check to check to see if the information is real can help us to not be misled as people and to stop the spread of ''fake news''.

On the topic of ''fake news''.A survey conducted by Rebecca Lennon, Regulatory Affairs Advisor at Ofcom was used to monitor news and information sources people are using, how much they trusted the information and their attitudes towards it. During the pandemic when they conducted this survey so much news was being spread around such as the ''origins of the virus'' and ''5g technology'' and my favourite the ''drinking water more frequently''. These bits of news were being frequently research and as such when something gets popular, then comes the misleading information. I mean who blames them even just in the UK and Ireland, news about covid-19 was being accessed once a day or more. Constantly checking to see any new updates only brought up conspiracies and information that wasn't true. At the start of the pandemic broadcasters, newspapers and radios were the most used sources to gain information but within the first month of lockdown nearly half of Northern Ireland had come across fake news. 

What I found the most interesting was that the common response was to not do anything with it. To just leave it and go on with your daily life. Nobody truly understands the impact of what misleading information can do as it can be harmful in certain ways. If there was more information provided about what to do with fact-checking and how to report fake news the media would be a much safer place to access your information.


                                                               Sources

                                                     Digital Media

                                                 Ofcom Research Covid 19

Tully M, Vraga Ek, Smithson A-B. News media literacy, perceptions of bias, and interpretation of news. Journalism. 2020;21(2):209-226. doi:10.1177/1464884918805262


Comments

  1. Hi Kate, I just read your blog and it was really interesting. I really liked the theme and colours you chose for your blog. very cute. I also liked that you added a bio to your blog, this was a nice personal touch, I think pictures would make your blog that bit better. Also I would like to hear more of your own opinion in you blog rather than just your findings. Overall your blog was great, it gave me lots of ideas on how to better my own! Keep up the good work and cant wait to read more of your blogs.

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  2. When it comes to this blog post, I personally think that it does its job as a post about media literacy. It does talk about the common issue of receiving biased information from the news. In this blog there have been mentions of the statistics and at the end, links were attached to send you to the articles that have been read by the blogger who wrote this blog. While reading it was evident that the blogger has read the articles given to her. It had the right pieces of information that the reader would need to know about.
    This blog showed that the blogger has put time and effort in both reading the information given to her and also absorbing the most important details needed for this post.
    The blog wasn’t too long, and it kept the readers attention the whole time. There were some minor spelling mistakes, like in the third paragraph you said “research” instead of “researched.” You also should have added commas in some places for the post to sound a bit better. Except for that, I personally think that the blog post was easy to read and understand.

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  3. Hi Kate, I really enjoyed reading your blog. You can see there was a great amount of effort put into this work as it is bulging with facts. I think as a reader and a person learning about digital literacy it was great to invest my time into this as it was short, neat, facts were very interesting which kept myself focused and intrigued to continue. I loved how you spoke about different companies especially social media networks, like Facebook and how they are signed up to EC code of practice on disinformation, telling your viewers who more than likely have a Facebook/Twitter account how they created a code check to make sure you can fact check information to see if it's true or not. I found this to be a great insight to learn.

    I would like to have seen your own opinion on digital literacy and from the facts you spoke about what was something new you learned? I think moving forward I would advise you to read over your work nothing major was out of place, but a misspelling or two. Other than that, I really enjoyed reading this blog, I learned from it myself so thank you. Great Work.

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