Tag: social media

Media Literacy and the Obesity Crisis

On February 13, 2018

Many schools have already implemented Media Literacy classes to help young adults sift through what’s real, what’s semi-real, and what’s totally false in their newsfeeds and Snap stories. From politics to “adult entertainment,” these media literacy classes attempt to equip students with the tools they need to discern the information they should base their decisions on.

One surprising area? Food advertisements. In the US, children suffering from obesity go on to develop lifelong problems, including diabetes, joint pain, cardiovascular diseases, and more. Some blame the problem on the lack of accessibility of healthful foods for both geographical and fiscal reasons. Others blame poor nutritional education, both on the parents’ part and the children’s part. The advertising industry has also taken some of the flack for marketing the salty, oily snacks to kids and using devious tactics to make the snacks seem better than they are.

Advertising dangerous activities to children has been taken very seriously for some time. In the 1990s, the cartoon camel used to advertise Camel Cigarettes came under fire as children began looking forward to the cartoon and associating the camel, and thus smoking, with fun. The company chose to settle a lawsuit alleging its complicity in convincing children to smoke and pulled the cartoon ad altogether.

Some nations have taken some more drastic measures to stop the promotion of harmful substances and snacks to kids. In 2016, eight nations declared that no advertisements for junk food could be aimed at children, and Chile took an especially drastic approach by outlawing the beloved mascots Tony the Tiger, among others, that make junk food appealing to kids.

In the US, though, such sweeping policies aren’t likely to catch on, so educators are taking a different approach — media literacy for food advertisements. That way, young people are more aware of the marketing tactics, half-truths, and imagery that snack companies use to convince them to purchase junk over healthful options.

Virginia Tech rolled out a program designed to help people practice looking at snack ads with a critical eye to point out what information they’re omitting and the other ways their desires for the foods are being manipulated. For example, ads often suggest that a person can become more popular or attractive if they purchase and consume the snack in the ad. The program asks users to create “counter ads” to sugar drinks by drafting alternative taglines that offer more truth than the original.

While widespread inclusion of food literacy may take some time, but it could save lots of money down the road in healthcare costs once today’s youth become adults.

Finding the truth after a Disaster

By Brecke Boyd

On November 2, 2017

In Brecke Boyd, Media Literacy

From the allegations of Russian interfering with the US election to natural disasters to national tragedies, Westerners especially turn to search engines and various social media feeds for the most up-to-date and accurate information about the people involved and the status of the event. Before there was internet, information often trickled out slowly by ways of multiple channels, and while it was frustrating, it was usually pretty accurate.

In a lightning-speed world, though, information is updated on a second-by-second basis, but its accuracy can be low, and the sources are of dubious integrity at best. Lots of reports of missing people, criminals at large, and conspiracies circulate in the immediate aftermath of a huge event. On the Media, a WNYC podcast on media literacy, published a handy list of best practices for what to believe — or not believe — in the immediate aftermath of an event.

Remember pic.twitter.com/4ik7zs9QlI

— Baratunde (@baratunde) October 2, 2017

Usually, a little bit of googling will disprove some of the fishier claims, but what happens when even online search platforms fall prey to some of the nonsensical discussions on the internet given artificial intelligence is producing the results by computer algorithms?

After the tragic shooting in Las Vegas, users rushed to search engines and searched, “Las Vegas Shooting” to stay up to date on the manhunt, the victims, and the motive of the crime. Online algorithms produced some reliable sources, but it also produced a piece from 4chan, a website infamous for peddling wild conspiracies, trolling comment sections, and leading readers astray. Within a few hours, a spokesperson from one of the search engine platforms noted the error of the algorithm and took down the entry.

Widely used social media platforms, too, retrieved articles from alt-right websites when online users queried for information about the act of domestic terrorism. The Crisis Management Hub team for one of the social media platforms responsible for curating up-to-date reports on huge phenomena issued a statement saying they had removed the errant articles and that it would do better to vet which articles its algorithm produced.

When it comes to artificial intelligence and computer algorithms, it’s important to remember that they don’t exist in vacuums, and they have the same biases as their programmers. In a recent demonstration, an online translation platform showed how it assigns gender pronouns when translating from a language that is gender neutral. A presenter translated the sentence “She is a doctor” from English into Turkish, a gender-neutral language. When that sentence was translated back into English, the algorithm produced, “He is a doctor.”

Bias in AI: when you translate this from English ➡️Turkish, a gender neutral language, then that same Turkish phrase back to English #GHC17 pic.twitter.com/qyODOuW18Q

— Diane Kim (@_DianeKim) October 4, 2017

Algorithms are products of our world and reflect the society we’ve built, and to that end, it should be no surprise that they don’t always behave the way we think they ought to. As such, in the aftermath of a national disaster or tragedy, tread cautiously, and report any errors you spot so that the programs do better next time around.

Back to School Media Literacy

By Brecke Boyd

On August 29, 2017

In Brecke Boyd, Media Literacy

Brecke Latham Boyd Back-to-school Media Literacy It’s getting to be back-to-school time again. In addition to all the frantic shopping that parents are doing to prepare their kids for a fresh school year, parents also spend these last precious days and weeks mentally and emotionally preparing their students for the realities of the social scene. From bullies to the “popular kids” to respecting teachers and law enforcement officers, there’s a lot of precarious navigating that young people have to do in between — and often during — learning time.

This year, though, it’s more important than ever for parents to equip their kids with the tools to wade into the political thickets, social media swamps, and rumor weeds and come out the other side educated and unscathed. With the modern state of politics, the ubiquity of social media, and the crashing waves of information and data that enter people’s purview hourly, young people need some sound advice and a strong moral compass for determining who to trust and where to go for the facts. Here’s some ways you can equip your child for the upcoming school year emotionally and mentally.

Ask For Sources | Rumors get started because nobody fact-checks information, and stories get exaggerated at every retelling. As you prep your child for the realities of returning to their 8-3 schedules, encourage your child to pause and consider how they can verify what they’ve just heard. Can they Google the claim? Can they ask the subject of the story? Even in a classroom, it’s well within the etiquette of respectful discourse for your child to ask a teacher where a claim about a historical fact or statistic came from.

Find Out What Others are Saying | Critics all across the political spectrum have been accused of “cherry picking” their news sources and academic studies such that they cite only those that bolster their viewpoints and omit those that prove detrimental to their agenda. Teachers aren’t immune from this, and neither are kids at the mercy of rumor mills. If your child happens upon a claim that seems a little too good to be true or a story to which there may be multiple sides, urge your child to explore what dissenters are saying. Where is their information coming from? What are some of the underlying assumptions on any side of an argument?

Don’t Repeat Unchecked Info | As I’ve talked about lots and lots of times before, social media has exacerbated the issues of people spreading unverified information. Claims, accusations, and “discoveries” will cross your child’s consciousness all day long. In insular communities like school buildings, students determine their social standing by when word of a rumor hits their ears, and as such, it’s tantalizing for students to spread both current events or juicy personal details as soon as they hear it. Get your student in the journalistic mindset of seeking out truth and professionally-researched opinions before they report on it to their friends and Twitter followers.

Teens & Media Literacy

By Brecke Boyd

On May 31, 2017

In Brecke Boyd, Media Literacy

Among those most vulnerable to falling for the pandemic of false information are young people in middle school and high school who don’t have the real-world experience yet to discern factual reporting from sensationalized nonsense. Some schools have begun to include classes in news and media literacy to help students think critically about bias, narrative, and “end goal” for the viewer, and it seems to be helping to create a stronger generation of media consumers, but we need more, and we need it now.

Buzzfeed recently polled school-aged students on their sensitivity to sensationalized news to get a sense of where we are now and what work still needs to be done. The same way that most people would classify themselves as good drivers, most young people classify themselves as adept at identifying lies on the internet. Buzzfeed partnered with the social media app After School whose target audience is exclusively grade school students. In all, 39,000 students completed the survey. In its analysis, Buzzfeed admits that its poll likely does not meet the standards of scientific rigor, since any student with the app could submit answers and there’s no way to determine the authenticity of the answers, but the responses are still worth noting.

According to the poll, a little over 80% of teens believe themselves to be very good at identifying falsities when they cross their newsfeeds. As Stanford has noted, though, many teens are not as good as they think they are, especially when it comes to determining the source of a claim. About 65% of students said that, when they spot bad intelligence online, they choose to ignore it, while around 30% said they call it out.

Among those teens who had never encountered the term “fake news,” a little over 65% still believed that the news publishes and promotes factually inaccurate stories. Surprisingly, though, only about half of those who identified as unfamiliar with the term believed that they could identify an example of fake news.

The author of the Buzzfeed piece noted that these results are unfortunate but not shocking at all. As per a 2016 poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, about three out of four adults had trouble spotting a fake news story when it came across their screens. In addition, the pollsters asked respondents to identify which of five headlines they’d seen come across their radars, and many said that they had seen headlines that had indeed been completely made up by the pollsters.

As the summer approaches, parents and children can embark on missions to combat fake news together. Dinnertime discussions about what’s going on in the news can help families consolidate all the news each member has individually consumed and check it against what other members have read. Many libraries also offer summer sessions on news literacy and discussion groups that may help all family members learn about avoiding the lure of click bait.