Читать книгу Trusting the News in a Digital Age - Jeffrey Dvorkin - Страница 10

Decontextualized information, or information that may be based on references outside of our knowledge or experience, makes no sense to us because the information is too unfamiliar. It is not framed in a way that we can recognize. The absence of cultural signifiers prevents us from understanding why this kind of news is being presented to us. It has little relevance because there is no context. So we click on something else, or turn the page, or switch to another podcast or station. If our imaginations are not engaged, we tend not to care enough to stick with the story.

The “why” of news literacy – and how to achieve it.

We need to know how and why the news came to be an important part of our imaginations and intellect. If the news is to be part of our lives, it needs to be handled carefully, creatively, even skeptically. We need to know where the news comes from, who is creating it, and what their cultural assumptions and motivations are. That way, we, as curious citizens and as news consumers, can make more informed choices about the world around us.

This is where the idea of news literacy comes in.

The concept is not particularly new, but it assumes a sense of urgency in these media‐saturated times. Some examples of institutions working towards promoting news literacy include

 the News Literacy Project, designed to help school children assess information on the Internet.

 local libraries, such as the state system in North Dakota, which works with readers to guide them on what constitutes reliable information.

 the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which has an impressive curriculum that is being taught throughout the university.

 various institutions in Europe –the European Centre for News Literacy in Poland, the Reuters Centre for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, and the Media Studies Department at the London School of Economics.