Civic Media Literacy in a Transmedia World: Balancing Personal Experience, Factual Accuracy and Emotional Appeal as Media Consumers and Circulators

Abstract

Amid growing concerns over the role of "fake news" in civic and political life, efforts to understand how to best prepare youth to evaluate and reason about online sources have gained a sense of urgency. However, less attention has been paid to how such skills are used in the context of the broader array of information behavior that is typical of civic and political participation today-particularly in the circulation of information. Through thematic analysis of interviews and think aloud tasks with n=24 urban high school students reasoning through the processes of search, credibility analysis and circulating information for the purposes of issue advocacy, two considerations for civic media literacy education emerged. First, greater attention is needed to educating youth to coordinate the considerations for factual accuracy with the social and emotional components of civic media, particularly once they move beyond the task of being asked to assess media and into the tasks of searching for or choosing to share media. Second, greater attention is needed on circulation in civic media literacy and what it means to share information ethically and responsibly.

Think before you share: building a civic media literacy framework for everyday contexts

“…In line with Bell and Kornbluh’s (2022) and Middaugh’s (2018) studies, commonly cited concerns extended to include personal relevance – whether the post aligned with their own experience or provided alternative perspectives on something of interest to them, additional relational considerations beyond civility, such as considering how their practices interacted with their friend and family relationships, and a series of considerations that reflect their understanding of a complex fit with internet culture – reflecting on how factors such as aesthetics, the number of likes/shares/retweets, connections to popular culture and celebrity, and humor, influence what they and others might pay attention to.…”

Writing Toward Justice: Youth Speculative Civic Literacies in Online Policy Discourse

“…Clark and Marchi (2017), for example, emphasize the “connective journalism” (p. 13) through which young people communicate and build meaning privately and publicly about the activities in their varied communities. Such activities highlight the role of youth today as “media circulators” that curate and share information for their peers in ways that extend beyond what is frequently taught in school settings (Middaugh, 2018, p. 50). Though this body of scholarship explores and pushes civics in varied directions, the crux of this scholarly dialogue recognizes that the crucible of school-based civic learning is often one that does not yield outcomes that are emancipatory for students that otherwise have little reason to “buy into a system where they feel excluded’’ (Watts & Flanagan, 2007, p. 781).…”

Teaching “Against” Social Media: Confronting Problems of Profit in the Curriculum

“…• Situated activities, as Middaugh (2018) recommended, in which students identify strategies, practice participating and sharing in online civic activities that they find important, and then reflecting on the ethical and democratic considerations.…”