What Is News/Media Literacy?
News Literacy is a curriculum designed to help students develop critical thinking skills in order to judge the reliability and credibility of information, whether it comes via print, television or the Internet. This is a particularly important skill in the Digital Age, as everyone struggles to deal with information overload and the difficulty in determining the authenticity of reports. In this lesson, students are taught to evaluate information primarily by analyzing news as well as new forms of information that are often mistaken for journalism.
The Digital Age poses four information literacy challenges for civil society:
News Literacy is a curriculum designed to help students develop critical thinking skills in order to judge the reliability and credibility of information, whether it comes via print, television or the Internet. This is a particularly important skill in the Digital Age, as everyone struggles to deal with information overload and the difficulty in determining the authenticity of reports. In this lesson, students are taught to evaluate information primarily by analyzing news as well as new forms of information that are often mistaken for journalism.
The Digital Age poses four information literacy challenges for civil society:
- The overwhelming amount of information that floods over us each day makes it difficult to sort out reliable from fabricated information.
- New technologies to create and widely share information make it possible to spread misinformation that looks like it’s from an authoritative source.
- The conflict between speed and accuracy has escalated. We all want information as quickly as possible, but accelerating the distribution of information in the Digital Era has also increased the chances that the information will be wrong.
- The Internet and Social Media make it much easier to select only the information that supports our preexisting beliefs, reinforcing rather than challenging them.