Before we delve into things like the psychology of many media posts, language used, and how to combat it, it’s important to go over some basic tips you can use to improve your media literacy. These tie back to the basics of critical thinking, which is the idea of looking at ideas (or social media posts) with a thoughtful eye instead of simply skimming it or sharing it without thinking about it first.
So, what are some basic questions you can ask of a news post, someone’s post on something vaguely controversial or timely, or information that is supposedly meant to help.
Basic Questions to Ask
In order to really get started with improving media literacy, it’s important to regularly ask the following questions when something crosses your feed that seems inflammatory, emotional, or vague.
- Who created the post? Was it a company? An individual? An organization? Is it someone you know or a stranger? What is that person’s profession and background? Are they an expert or an amateur?
- Why as the post created? Information? Persuasion? To sell you something? To change your mind on something? To provoke an emotion?
- Who is the messaging for? Older adults? Younger adults? Children? Men? Women? People who share a particular interest? Someone of a particular political slant?
- What techniques are being used to make the message more credible? Statistics? Citations? Quotes? Voice Overs? Direct or indirect evidence? Making you ‘feel’ first and think later? (We’ll get into more of this later)
- What was left out and what was emphasized? Why was something left out or emphasized? Is the story balanced or imbalanced? What else do you need to know in order to understand what is being told to you?
- How did the message make you feel? Angry? Sad? Excited? Happy? Enlightened? Thoughtful? Panicked? What was the purpose of making you feel that way?
If nothing else, that last question can get you started on all the rest. A post or headline is often written to tap some strong emotion, often anger or fear, since those emotions are powerful and thus provokes you to engage with the media in some way before doing any further research on the topic.
In other words, we want to ask a lot of ‘who’, and ‘why’ questions before engaging too firmly with posts, especially controversial or emotional ones.
Examples
Political posts in particular are pretty emotional right now with everything that is happening all over the world. It’s very common to see explosive (in some way) news headlines, opinion pieces, short form videos, and social media posts that are firmly in one camp or another. And it’s very easy to get sucked into these posts and get outraged, offended, or disdainful of it. But it’s also important to note that these strong emotions prompt engagement and engagement often makes money for the person doing the posting (or at least gives them attention).
So, before we get into anything deeper and more technical, these questions are a good place to start when it comes to engaging properly with social media and news sites. It can also help you reduce your blood pressure and engage more meaningfully with your media which also create a smarter algorithm and better curation for you.
Keep questioning!
