Principles for a New Media Literacy

In this Berkman Center for Internet and Society "Media Re:public" paper about the expanding and diversifying "media ecosystem" spawned by the availability of digital media tools, a difficult challenge is analysed: "In this emergent global conversation, which has created a tsunami of information, what can we trust?" The article proposes rethinking, or at least reapplying, some older cultural norms in modern ways.

Once called "media literacy", this set of principles includes trust and credibility, challenging for traditional media, and even more challenging for online media, for example, when there is too little context to ensure intended meaning. Where traditional media has established processes for “objective journalism”, new media has similar potential for excellence and error, as well as manipulation. Examples of manipulation in new media include politically funded blogging in election years, a startup called PayPerPost that pays bloggers to recommend products, stealth marketing, also called “buzz marketing,” of blogging paid by established commercial chain stores, rumour campaigns in election years designed to poison voters in swing states, and “sock puppets” - people posting under pseudonyms instead of their real names, and either promoting their own work or denigrating their opponents.


The author commends the worldwide web as a medium that has begun to critique journalism and hold it accountable. Sites are now trying to generate and aggregate media criticism. The web and the associated media tools available also give more widespread accessibility so that media consumers can become creators, which can be beneficial particularly when they assume the role of serving the public interest through journalism. However, as stated here, the role demands a new kind of media literacy for both consumers and creators.

The categories set forth here for participation in media consumption are: scepticism, judgement, understanding, and reporting. These are further described as:

1. "Be skeptical of absolutely everything....When small errors are endemic, rational people learn to have a small element of doubt about every assertion not backed up by unassailable evidence. More worrisome in some ways are errors of omission, where journalists fail to ask the hard but necessary questions of people in power.
2. Although skepticism is essential, don’t be equally skeptical of everything....We need to bring to digital media the same kinds of parsing we learned in a less complex time when there were only a few primary sources of information.
3. Go outside your personal comfort zone....The easiest way to move outside your comfort zone is simply to range widely. If you’re an American, read Global Voices Online... a project that aggregates blogging and other material from outside the North America. If you are a white American, stop by Black Planet and other sites offering news and community resources for and by African Americans. Follow links in blogs you normally read, especially when they take you to sources that disagree with the author.
4. Ask more questions....This principle goes by many names: research, reporting, homework, and many others. The more personal or important you consider the topic at hand, the more essential it becomes to follow up on the media that cover the topic.
5. Understand and learn media techniques....In a media-saturated society, we need to know how digital media work. For one thing, we are all becoming media creators to some degree. Moreover, solid communications techniques are going to be critically important skills for social and economic participation..."

The principles of media creation include:

1. "Do your homework, and then do some more. ...What matters is to keep reporting until you get the information that is critical, not just what is on the surface. Your readers collectively know vastly more than you do. Learn from them, and revise your work accordingly..
2. Get it right, every time. ...Factual errors, especially ones that are easily avoidable,
   do more to undermine trust than almost any other failing.
3. Be fair to everyone. ...Ensure that you offer a place for people to reply to what you (and your commenters) have posted. You can insist on civility in your own work, and in the comment postings. Point to a variety of material [through hyperlinks] other than your own, to support what you’ve said and to offer varying perspectives. Most of all, fairness requires that you’ve heard what people are saying. Journalism is evolving from a lecture to a conversation, and the first rule of good conversation is to listen.
4. Think independently, especially of your own biases. ...Independent thinking has many facets. Listening, of course, is the best way to start. But you can and should relentlessly question your own conclusions based on that listening.
5. Practice and demand transparency. …For example, bloggers should reveal biases and conflicts-of-interest."

The author concludes that "we are doing a poor job of ensuring that consumers and producers of media in a digital age are equipped" for the tasks implied by the standards recommended here. The author promotes instruction on this new media literacy as a job for parents and schools.