As 鈥渇ake news鈥� proliferates and heated political debates rage online, more teachers are turning to media literacy to help their students make sense of how information is created and distributed today.
In a , the RAND Corporation surveyed this developing landscape of media literacy education. Through interviews with a dozen media literacy experts and a review of studies on educational interventions, researchers examined how media literacy is defined, what instructional resources are available, and how effective media literacy education is in guarding against the spread of misinformation.
They found that though experts say media literacy is urgently important, there isn鈥檛 one universal skill set for the discipline鈥攎aking it difficult to evaluate and compare educational programs.
The report is the latest installment in the RAND Corporation鈥檚 study of what they call 鈥渢ruth decay,鈥� or the blurring of the lines between opinion and objective fact. The first report in the series, which my colleague Stephen Sawchuk , attempted to define the problem and identify its source.
In that 2018 report, the researchers wrote that the public increasingly prioritizes opinion and personal experience over facts鈥攁nd that the veracity of established fact is now up for debate. Political polarization, cognitive biases, and the rise of social media are partially to blame, they argued. But the education system also plays a role. The pressure on schools to prioritize reading and math, coupled with the difficulty the education system faces in adapting to rapid change, means that students aren鈥檛 always learning how to be critical consumers of information.
That鈥檚 where media literacy comes in, said Alice Huguet, an associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and the lead author on this new report. Explicitly teaching these skills is one way to combat truth decay, and to help people become 鈥渂etter prepared to enter the information ecosystem,鈥� she said.
In interviews in this new report, experts said that broadly, media literacy refers to the ability to find, critically interpret, and create media. But under this large umbrella, there are lots of subfields that deal with specific types of information鈥攕uch as news literacy, digital literacy, and science literacy.
The report also found that there are different ways of conceptualizing media literacy鈥檚 purpose. Goals vary, from vetting the quality of information, to uncovering the financial motivations behind certain messages, to understanding media鈥檚 role in civic and political life.
Ultimately, though, there isn鈥檛 conclusive evidence about which approaches are most effective in K-12 classrooms. The studies researchers reviewed differed in how they defined and measured media literacy skills, and there weren鈥檛 many studies that measured the effects of specific interventions. Overall though, correlational research has suggested that teaching media literacy skills can improve students鈥� ability to analyze and interpret information, said Huguet.
Classroom Applications
What do these findings mean for educators who want to teach media literacy skills?
There isn鈥檛 clear guidance on what resources might be best. For now, said Huguet, teachers should focus on their particular school or community context, and their own expertise, to determine what鈥檚 most useful for their students. The researchers created a database of 50 educational resources, ranging from short videos to entire curricula. They didn鈥檛 evaluate these materials, but they did describe their format and the content they cover.
Still, Huguet identified some best practices. Media literacy instruction isn鈥檛 just about fact-checking, she said, and teachers should acknowledge complexity.
鈥淚n our really heated political climate, with all of this attention on 鈥榝ake news,鈥� it鈥檚 really easy for us to think that we just want to teach people how to distinguish between what鈥檚 real and what鈥檚 fake,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 not that simple.鈥�
Teachers should work with students to develop other media literacy skills, too, she said鈥攍ike evaluating the process that creates a product. For example, rigorous scientific research about climate change is created through a different process than an opinion article on the topic. Understanding the standards for scientific research gives students more context when they鈥檙e trying to decide what is trustworthy and what they should share, Huguet said.
In interviews with RAND researchers, experts discussed balancing skepticism with trust. It鈥檚 important for students to understand that there are trustworthy sources of information, and where to find them.
Huguet noted that it鈥檚 not clear from the research whether integrating media literacy across the curriculum is more or less effective than offering it as a standalone class. Still, she said, there is evidence that more exposure to these skills is correlated with better outcomes. The report also suggests involving community members, like librarians and clergy, in media literacy education.
鈥淭hinking about how many different kinds of approaches there are to media literacy research helps us see that you don鈥檛 have to be a language arts or social studies teacher to be involved in media literacy education,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f we want to have the herd immunity that we talk about, which is everybody is inoculated to this issue of truth decay, it鈥檚 going to take all hands on deck.鈥�
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