Filtering the ExoFlood:
Strategies for Media Literacy

Description: In our ‘information exoflood’ era of polluted information, “deep fake” videos, social media bots, and AI-authored fictional news, media literacy is more important than ever. This workshop highlights multiple tools and strategies. Learn to proactively filter your social media feed and teach students to filter theirs, instead of passively reading/ingesting a feed of content created by an opaque algorithm others have designed for economic / commercial purposes. Using the SIFT framework developed for the Digital Polarization project, we will practice strategies to identify the validity of text, images, and video content online. We will highlight strategies for starting conversations with students about information validity, our responsibility to fact-check before republishing article links or social media posts, and ways to “train the machine” of YouTube (and other recommendation engines) with intention and purpose. Learn how the “Surveillance Capitalism” economic model of technology companies today can inform our decisions about digital sharing, privacy, and online research.

by Dr. Wesley Fryer, Ph.D. (@wfryer)