The historian in me always wants to look back at how this sort of media control has played out historically, so thinking about examples like William Randolph Hearst, Henry Luce, David Sarnoff, Axel Springer, Kerry Packer, or Rupert Murdoch across newspapers, radio, television, etc. might be interesting. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_proprietor

Tim Wu's The Master Switch is pretty accessible in this area.

On the intercultural front, the language (very careful public relations and "corporate speak") used in this leaked audio file of the most recent Twitter All Hands phone call might be fascinating and an interesting primary source for some of the questions you might be looking at on such an assignment. https://peertube.dk/w/2q8cdKR1mTCW7RyMQhcBEx

Who are the multiple audiences (acknowledged and unacknowledged) being addressed? (esp. as they address leaks of information in the call.)

Dame Adjin-Tettey, T. (2022). Combating fake news, disinformation, and misinformation: Experimental evidence for media literacy education. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 9(1), 2037229. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2022.2037229

Study: Digital literacy doesn’t stop the spread of misinformation. (n.d.). MIT Sloan. Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-digital-literacy-doesnt-stop-spread-misinformation

https://teach.kqed.org/

Sirlin, N., Epstein, Z., Arechar, A. A., & Rand, D. (2021). Digital literacy and susceptibility to misinformation. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7rb2m

In fact, HTML makes it very easy (true for the reasons that lead Mark to write that it can be copied and manipulated). It's contemporary authoring systems and the typical author-as-publisher and the choices they make that are what makes this difficult.

The future of rich media lies in striving to be more like dead media (or at least mining it for insights by better understanding it through thoughtful study), rather than the misguided attempts we've been living inside.

(This is something that I've done a 180 on in the last year or so.)

Brashier, N. M., & Schacter, D. L. (2020). Aging in an Era of Fake News. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 0963721420915872. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420915872

Bode, L., & Vraga, E. (2020 May 7). Analysis | Americans are fighting coronavirus misinformation on social media. Washington Post.https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/07/americans-are-fighting-coronavirus-misinformation-social-media/

The Associated Press (2020, May 8). UN Chief Says Pandemic Is Unleashing a “Tsunami of Hate.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/05/08/world/ap-un-virus-outbreak-hate-speech.html

• 0:37 - need to recognize the networked nature of today's media
• 0:37 - need to recognize the networked nature of today's media
• 0:48 - work within traditional media literacy and build on things that have worked for decades, but recognize what has changed and use the strengths of networked media
• 1:05 - how do children check sources on the internet
• 1:20 - one of the simplest ways is to follow the links back to the source
• 1:34 - when it's a photo, you can do a reverse image search
• 1:50 can do a news search and sort by date to see if the news story is current
• 2:45 - misinformation campaigns happening - mixing genuine content with misinformation
• 3:25 - some create alternate identities or fake accounts
• 4:25 - important to get a sense of how reliable a source is
• 4:35 - what is the purpose of the source and what is their business model? - is there accuracy and reliability in this, then likely will trust it as a source

• 5:10 - impact that we don't get our news from a limited number of sources
• 5:45 - some of these sources are from friends on social media, others are algorithmically determined
• 6:08 - some advantages and disadvantages - the old model was news curated in a newspaper; new model has the potential of getting news we may not have gotten in the old model
• 6:20 but in the old system you had gatekeeping and 'provenance'; in online news it's sometimes an effort to see where the information originates; gate keeping falls to us now
• 7:05 we need to train young people to do this
• 7:30 how should we teach this?
• 7:35 - with the concept approach you don't need to feel like an expert

• 7:40 - success teaching media literacy from the key concepts for three decades; begin from these
• 7:52 - media are constructed;
• 7:55 - they have commercial considerations;
• 7:58 they have social and political implications;
• 8:00 that audiences negotiate meaning;
• 8:05 that each medium has a unique form and the form influences the content
• 8:20 these can be applied to any form of media and adapted to any grade from K-12

• 8:30 so the key concepts of digital literacy are paralleled and are in addition to those, they don't replace the original five concepts
• 8:40 now have implications of digital literacies in that they are networked so we need to understand the idea of the network
• 8:50 understand that content now is shareable, that this is the default rather than the exception
• 8:55 - the ways the tools we use influence not just the content but the ways we use them
• 9:05 - this has an impact, an ethical dimension
• 9:10 - these can be applied in any context and to any grade level
• 9:20 - we have a full digital literacy curriculum that we offer (speaking about Media Smarts Canada); it has lessons on seven different aspects that a teacher or school board can use
• 9:45 - the value of the key concepts is teachers can modify these resources to their contexts
• 9:50 - teachers have in those key concepts what is essentially a GUIDING STAR to understand what they are supposed to be achieving with these lessons

what is this?

When students are shown quick techniques for judging the veracity of a news source, they will use them. Regardless of their existing beliefs, they will distinguish good sources from bad sources.

https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/

never mind that fake news is neither new (forgery, quackery, and conspiracy theorizing are not recent inventions) nor exclusively right-leaning. The new form it has taken in readily sharable social media, however, has made it easy for conventional media to excuse themselves from responsibility for how the election was covered.

"Fake news" was a small factor, compared to mainstream media treating Trump as a legitimate candidate, and sensationalizing hacked emails that contained nothing significant.

Did Media Literacy Backfire?

Media literacy asks people to raise questions and be wary of information that they’re receiving. People are. Unfortunately, that’s exactly why we’re talking past one another.

...

Addressing so-called fake news is going to require a lot more than labeling. It’s going to require a cultural change about how we make sense of information, whom we trust, and how we understand our own role in grappling with information.

The Web has become an insidious propaganda tool. To fight it, digital literacy education must rise beyond technical proficiency to include wisdom.

• Double-check every claim before you share.
• Be wary of casual scrolling.<br> Everything you see affects your attitudes.
• Don't automatically disbelieve the surreal (or unpleasant).
• Do not exaggerate your own claims.
• Be prepared to repeat the truth over and over.
• Curate good resources, and share updates to them.
  • It will reinforce the previous information.
  • it will boost search engine rankings of the collection.