Save Room for Research: Minding Your Media Diet

To conclude this tangent on media literacy and media diets (for now), let’s talk about volume. The other day I read a poem Amy Turn Sharp shared, it simply read “Edit Your Life.”

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To curate your content intake is to keep this journey sustainable. Some ideas for getting involved and avoiding the overwhelm:

1. Remember you do not have to be, and in fact cannot be, an expert on all things.

Consider prioritizing a single issue you want to follow all year (and/or) focus your energy on issues that are actually making it onto the agenda.

2. Unsubscribe, Unfollow Uninstall

For every conference I attend, and for every documentary I watch, I end up with a new iOS app, an e-newsletter subscription and an SMS alert. That’s not sustainable. Go through and clear the clutter so you can read and respond to what really matters on an everyday basis.

3. Reduce crap content so your brain has more room for the good stuff.

To make space for positive change, you might have a few extra hours lying around, but many people don’t. Glennon Doyle Melton made her shift from mommy-of-three blogger to New York Times bestseller (and Oprah’s Book Club pick) by giving up her nighttime TV habit.

“For a mom, that’s the finish line. That’s like the promised land. They’re all asleep and it’s the only time to not… have to give anyone any snacks. But I realized, if you want a creative life, you have to give up that hour of TV a night. That’s freaking it.”

If you want to be a force for the issues that shape your life, is a habit like this something you can sacrifice to make change more feasible?

Tell me: How do you unsubscribe and unplug to become your life’s editor-in-chief?

Find Respectable Opposing Views

You won’t see Samantha Bee host a smart conservative for her audience to take seriously. Deliberating with a GOP rep who has a valuable point to make on behalf of their party doesn’t make good infotainment. Instead, these shows share the most bizarre policy proposals and laughable public statements from the opposing side. Sure, there’s Meet the Press, but infotainment is way more fun to watch and more sharable on social media, where more people are getting their news.

media types consolidated to one social media feed

animation by TED-Ed

We know by now how the internet works as an echo chamber. Then, many of us actively curate our social media feeds and are quick to click Unfollow when acquaintances offend us (guilty 🙋🏻).

Finding balance in our media diets mean actively incorporating reliable sources with beliefs opposing our own. This isn’t about following hateful meme accounts or reading the comment sections from hell. It’s about finding a few people or organizations who use reliable facts and their own logic to present a view different from your own.

I asked myself, ‘What’s a right-leaning news source I trust as reliable, if not relatable?’ and came up blank. A quick search brought me to this Guardian article, So you want to get out of your bubble: try reading these conservative websites. Yes, I did just share my Google result with you–this is a communal journey, people.

I did remember a time I read the Heritage Foundation‘s proposal for an alternative to the ACA*. I didn’t agree, but I was able to engage with their argument in an intelligent manner. That’s what we’re going for. But I’ll admit, this single example I could muster was 6 years old, and assigned to me during my graduate program. Yikes.

I believe that exposing myself to smart (enough) approaches from other ideologies presents more opportunities for productive dialogue.

But we’re keeping it sustainable here! We’re not talking about engaging across viewpoints yet. For now, take this baby step by spending a few minutes to find some sources you can stomach on the ‘other side’–whatever that side might be.

Pray tell–what sources do you follow for the sake of cracking open your echo chamber?

*This proposal is all kinds of long but Heritage has tons of 3-5 minute reads that could be more easily integrated into your media diet.

Checking Your Sources

After learning about my reps, I ran into some knowledge gaps about a few policy areas. If that was your experience too, you might have found yourself in the expansive internets of politicking.

Animation by Patrick Smith

First, know that you don’t have to be the expert on all things! Finding comfort in saying “I don’t know” is a liberating exercise we all need to re-condition ourselves into.

When you do want to learn more, evaluate your sources. You don’t have to limit your sources to academic journals to be considerate of which sites you trust and which sources you follow on social media. Here are some questions you can ask about a source:

Is this person an expert?

Do they have experience working in this field? With the communities of people involved in this issue?

Are facts present and from a reliable source?

Is there data to support this person’s claim? What do contradicting studies say? Is the way this person presents research data representative of how the research authors are summarizing their findings?

What’s at stake for this person/organization?

Is this article trying to sell something? Are they connected to a line of funding at stake? Is it their job to defend a group of people or a resource?

Admittedly, this is complicated to assess as content itself is a commodity. Driving traffic to a site or app earns ad money.

About domains…

Old school advice says to look for a .org vs .com domain extension, but this distinction is less meaningful as anyone can launch a .org domain. The .edu extension is supposed to imply a higher degree of integrity, but it’s not full-proof. Universities are creating open web spaces where students, faculty and staff can create content freely on their own .edu spaces with no vetting before publication. Good for creativity, community and free speech, potentially bad for the integrity of the .edu domain.

Resources for Fact Checking

Over time you’ll become more familiar with which sources you find to be reliable and fact-based. Check that stats and quotes are present, and then check if they’re real. You’ll probably use a mix of timely fact-checks around political debates and speeches, sites like factcheck.org and your own research skills to get a feel for reliability. Do remember that third party fact checkers are still human and can still be biased. Consider: what facts are checked? How do they summarize partial-truths?

Shades of Grey

These issues are often complicated and there are two sides, as well as two sets of data, for each argument. You won’t always get a conclusive answer on which side is ‘right’, but you can get a sense of which facts are true, offering a bit more clarity around a complex issue.

There’s a lot more to say about media literacy and a balanced ‘media diet’ but we’re talking sustainability here so I’m serving you one course at a time. More next week!

Enlightened Content Consumers: Any other resources you use to determine reliable sources vs “fake news”? Do tell.

Sustainable Steps

Sustainable Steps for Civic Engagement

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