Today, 24 October, marks the start of the Global Media and Information Literacy Week. It was launched by the UN General Assembly in 2021 to highlight the need for factual, timely, targeted, clear, accessible, multilingual information. Media literacy is not only about the competencies of an individual who masters the skills of refuting fakes, ethical behaviour on social media, creating and promoting quality content, but also about the national security of each country. In the context of hybrid warfare, media literacy helps to solve one of the most important problems of the 21st century – the transformative impact of digital information and communication technologies on the course of events in global society.
All media messages are constructed
Media literacy is not a new phenomenon. Media critics have been paying attention to it since the 1980s, as the impact of the media on communities was already quite noticeable. Moreover, it was realised that media content contains certain vectors of such influence that make people behave in accordance with the expectations of politicians or the needs of big business. One of the first media educators to summarise the requirements for a media literate person was Stacey Goodman, a teacher of new media and film production from California. His manual Social Media Literacy: Five Key Principles dates back to 1987 and contains a golden fund of observations on media reality that has not lost its relevance to this day. The first principle that a media literate person needs to master is that all media messages are constructed.
What are we talking about? The media provide us with a picture of the world that is fundamentally different from the real state of affairs. It is only a certain slice of reality, motivated by the information policy of the publication, the ambitions of its owners or a government order. Media theorists call this approach Agenda setting – setting the news agenda. What does it mean? Thousands of events take place in the world every day, but only a very limited number (top 5, top 10, top 20) make it to the pages of newspapers or onto TV or radio. So we have to understand that the media picture of the world is just a construct, not reality as such.
Media messages shape our perception
The second principle is that media messages shape our perception. The media are responsible for most of the observations and experiences that make up our understanding of the world. A large part of our worldview is based on media messages created with a certain position, interpretations and conclusions already built into them. Thus, it is the media that largely gives us a sense of reality. Thanks to digital technologies, each of us has the ability to create and replicate our own content, or to respond to the messages of other content creators and help spread their messages. Therefore, everyone who demonstrates responsible media consumption should think about what images, articles and videos we choose to share with friends and colleagues – do they really reflect our reality and not just reflect popular opinions?
The third principle, according to Stacey Goodman, is that audiences vary, and so does the understanding of the same message. Although the media provides us with material on which to base our picture of reality, each of us finds meanings according to individual factors, such as personal needs and fears, positive or negative issues of the day, racial and gender differences, family and cultural background, moral principles, etc. And here a whole range of questions arises for a media literate person to consider: when we publish content on social media, do we think about the diversity of our audience? Is it possible that this content will be traumatic for someone? Do we think about the consequences and interpretations of our content? Do we understand that what is witty and fun for us can be destructive and outrageous for others?
In the theory of mass communication, there is a concept called a ‘pathogenic text’, i.e. a text that can cause pain and suffering to others. Conscientious media users should avoid creating and replicating such texts. They may include jokes based on topics from the realm of black humour, such as death, illness, and disfigurement. It is worth remembering that these are taboo topics that should not be abused, even when it comes to the enemy. The flash mob, during which users shared short texts written from the bodies of the occupiers on social media, was certainly pathogenic. A Telegram bot was used for this purpose. The media practice of dehumanising the enemy is quite common during war, but turning it into mass entertainment aimed at destroying humanity as such is unacceptable.
If you don’t pay for the goods, you are the goods
The fourth principle is that all media messages have commercial interventions. Most of the content we create is distributed for free, but there is a price we pay for these ‘free’ services. Everything we publish in the online space is used to build our profile as a potential buyer. Most of what we post or share on social media can draw our friends into this commercial scheme, usually without our knowledge. The commercial nature of online media influences what we choose to post on social media and what we share with our friends. In other words, if we consume something for free, we are the product here.
Stacey Goodman emphasises that media literacy aims to provide knowledge about how the media is influenced by commercial entities, how they can interfere with content and its distribution. Most media is a business that needs to make a profit. The issues of ownership and control are central: a relatively small percentage of people control what we watch, read and hear in the media.
All media messages include points of view – this is the fifth principle that a media literate person needs to be aware of. All media products are in a sense advertising, as they promote values and lifestyles. Mainstream media expresses – explicitly or implicitly – ideological messages about issues such as high quality of life, stimulating consumer interest, the role of women, approval of government actions, etc. The same can be said about amateur media production, which raises the question: how do we use media to ‘cut out’ the unwanted from our lives, and depict only what is most photogenic or resonates with a wide audience? When we post photos from our holidays instead of photos from our everyday lives, what message do we send about the good and the bad in the world?
The existence of an online event is stronger than the existence of a real event. In the middle of the last century, the ontology of a media event was discussed in the same sense: if journalists did not record the fact that a tree fell in the forest, it was not considered to have fallen. For centuries, events in the world have been legitimised by the media. Today, it is the users themselves who give legitimacy to events.
What is fact-checking aimed at?
Fact-checking practice makes up a large part of information and media literacy. This includes the ability of individual media users to identify and refute fakes. It is also the institutionalised efforts of experts to neutralise disinformation and false narratives.
Today, fact-checking is multidimensional. It aims to verify and expose the unreliability of facts and data, as well as the cause-and-effect relationships between them (facts and data can be published, shown in photos/videos, publicly announced by prominent speakers);
– Identification of signs of manipulation of facts and data, causal relationships between them, substitution of facts with fakes;
– restoring and demonstrating the true picture of phenomena, events, and trends;
– deepening and expanding the knowledge of the consumer of information about the facts and phenomena under investigation.
AI threats are a hot topic for media literate people
This year’s theme of the Global Information and Media Literacy Week focuses on the importance of acquiring critical thinking skills in the modern digital world.
Digital platforms have fundamentally changed the way we create, consume and disseminate information, creating new challenges for assessing the credibility of content. With the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, the boundaries between human-generated content and artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly blurred, requiring new skills and a critical approach. This is an important moment for people to be able to shape the digital spaces in which they interact and contribute to a more sustainable information ecosystem.
First of all, media users should be aware that more and more of the content they encounter in their everyday reality is generated by AI. Images that are fabricated by artificial intelligence to evoke strong emotions and persuade people to take certain actions can be particularly influential.
To check text for authenticity, you should use programs that identify the source of its origin – human or AI. We will mention, in particular, a program such as GPTZero, a tool designed to determine whether a text was created by generative models such as GPT. It is able to analyse text based on AI characteristics. We would also like to point out AI Text Detector, which also allows you to find out the origin of a text and, at the same time, detects its readability.
Subscribe to fact-checking resources
To improve their media literacy, ordinary media users should subscribe to the pages of the most famous fact-checking platforms in Ukraine: Bez Lyny, the National Security and Defence Council’s Countering Disinformation Centre, Raccoon Note, Media Detector, VoxCheck, etc. They provide up-to-date information on fakes and propaganda narratives that appear in the Ukrainian media space. Being aware of refuted fakes means being armed and able to protect yourself from the influence of disinformation. Fakes are often repetitive and cyclical. The more such material we see on fact-checkers’ platforms, the more likely we are to avoid falling for fake news and manipulators.
In today’s world, where messages are becoming increasingly complex and often contradictory, achieving the common good is impossible without people’s active participation in countering new challenges and threats. To take full advantage of the opportunities offered by information and communication technologies, everyone must have media and information literacy competencies that allow them to better understand and influence the situation.
