Media Literacy isn’t dead…or is it?
Can we really say something is dead if we don’t understand what it is? Media Literacy. It sounds big and scary but all it really means is the ability to critically analyse stories presented in media.
So, is this ability dead, or merely dying? Can we revive it? Should we?
I’m sure we’ve all heard the clamouring of tech bros claiming AI is the next big thing, that it will help humans to be more efficient and will eliminate the wasteful, time consuming jobs out there. You know, the ones that have enabled humans to get a foothold in the workplace. On the flip side of that we’ve all heard the nay-sayers claiming Skynet is on the horizon and we’ll all be killed in the AI uprising by robots.
Look, dramatics aside, there is a point to this. And that point is one simple question: Has AI ruined media literacy?
AI is this big, all-encompassing thing. An idea. Nobody really knows what it is anymore. A little history lesson here: AI was a thing as far back as the 1940s. Scientists saw that the human brain was powered by an electrical network, and from there it wasn’t much of a leap to imagine constructing a computer brain. The Turing test (devised by Alan Turing) proposed that if a machine could carry on a conversation in a way indistinguishable from one with a human then it could be said the machine was able to ‘think.’
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Was this actually used by the public? No.
The real issue facing society now is the reliance on AI. Young people use it as a therapist, a friend, or even a partner sometimes. There’s always a tech bro building a new chatbot to streamline things, causing unemployment in the process. But there’s something worse. It’s becoming harder to tell what’s real from what’s fake.
But what has all that got to do with media literacy?
Well, if you see something online or on tv, how do you know if it’s real? In an age of deepfakes and advanced models, what you see and hear might not be what’s really happening. Just this past week the BBC were found to have doctored footage of a speech by the sitting US President. Now, I’m not going to get political, EVER. But I think we can all agree that news should be as impartial as possible to present the facts to viewers. I’m aware this isn’t the case, many news stations are funded by one group or another in order to keep feeding their version of events to the public, and the problem is that the public aren’t questioning. They’re not looking critically at things and making informed choices.
It’s not just news. Media like novels and film or TV is also seeing a shift. Writers rarely spell things out, they rely on context clues and subtext to carry stories forward and to carry the message of that story to fans. But now we’re seeing so many just taking something at face value. Maybe it’s just my years of studying the English language and literature but the old guy in a creepy castle who doesn’t speak English is rarely ever something benign.
What’s the takeaway here? Is this just a rant about people not using their brains? Well, partially yes, this is my blog after all and my own thoughts. But also, it’s a plea. To engage with the news and media you consume. To truly think about what you see and look deeper. We’re not going to get out of hell if we don’t start making changes, if we don’t start investing in our youth and questioning what’s happening in the world and why.
If you want the robot overlords, that’s fine. Personally I’d rather not.
