Media literacy can be a misleading term, but as Julie Smith so adeptly put it, it is “the constant critical questioning of all the media that we consume.” (“EDCI 338 – MEDIA LITERACY with JULIE SMITH” 7:59–8:04). This doesn’t refer to having to criticize all the media we consume, but rather a practice of stepping back and regarding it from a subjective perspective to establish its relevance and accuracy. While the internet is a wealth of knowledge it is also a wealth of misinformation, and without media literacy skills individuals find themselves sucked into a cycle of at best misleading and at worse dangerous and harmful content. Media literacy can be approached in many ways, but I was struck at how similar a skill it is to the critical thinking skills that were taught to me in school. Critical thinking in a classroom where you’re objectively analyzing and making judgments is the same as doing it at home or in the workplace when you consume media. Although we may have not been teaching media literacy, we’ve been teaching those skills for a long time it’s only a matter of applying them.

Unfortunately, media literacy is often written off. This is partly due to the idea that we as individuals are smart enough to figure out what is true for ourselves rather than being taught this, but also because the internet and media are a comparatively new aspect of our world and evolving constantly. It is easy with social media to fall into the trap of forgetting to consider employing media literacy. Much like the news cycles, social networks want us to engage and stay on their site and the best way for them to do that is to show us what we like and want to see. Unfortunately, this has created these enormous echo chambers, which are incredibly polarizing and divisive. A wide variety of varied perspectives in a PLN can help prevent this “echo chamber”, keep those media literacy skills sharp and foster discourse rather than division.

 Works cited

“EDCI 338 – MEDIA LITERACY with JULIE SMITH.” YouTube, uploaded by Jesse Miller, 6 June 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=57r3-aEnci0.