Decoding the Feed: Social Media and Critical Thinking

Tim Molina, a Sage Faculty Partner and Communications Professor at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas, sat down with Sage authors Susan Beauchamp and Stanley Baran to discuss the crucial role of media literacy and critical thinking in today's digital age. Susan and Stanley are the authors of Introduction to Human Communication: Perception, Meaning, and Identity, now in its 3rd edition.

Social media platforms often exploit algorithms and addictive features to reinforce biases and hinder critical thinking. To combat this, Susan and Stanley advocate for promoting cultural and educational initiatives that foster media literacy, self-awareness, curiosity, and empathy. By teaching students media literacy, journalism skills, and encouraging the seeking of diverse perspectives, they can become more discerning consumers of information and take personal responsibility for their digital experiences.

Transcript

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 0:00

Thank you so much for joining us here. This is Sage Publishing. My name is Tim Molina. I'm going to serve as your host and facilitator of a wonderful dynamic discussion that's about to happen here. I am a Faculty Partner with Sage Publishing, but I'm also serving as discipline coordinator in the Mass Communication department at Northwest Vista College. It's one of the Alamo Colleges in San Antonio, Texas, and we serve about 19,000 students. My courses that I've taught are primarily in media. So Introduction to Mass Communication, I've developed a media literacy course and some advertising and film classes, which really helped me to establish sort of a connection, this interdisciplinary connection with something I've taught previously, which was public speaking. So human communication is most definitely my, my core, where I come from, and it's just sort of evolved with this teaching practice that I have into media studies. So I think this is going to make for a wonderful discussion with our authors today. Here we have Susan Susan Beauchamp and Stanley Barron. Both are wonderful folks that I've studied their readings and and just admiring them today because they are with us. It is an honor and a privilege to to be here today and and listen to what they have to say. And so just a little bit about our guests today. They are authors of Introduction to Human Communication, the third edition. And Susan is has spent 20 years in television and radio Stanley is a professor emeritus in the communications department before beginning her teaching career, and Susan worked in numerous markets to include Philadelphia, Boston, LA and New at Bryant University, and earned his PhD at the University of York as a producer, writer and reporter and even an anchor. So Susan's focus in her graduate studies was in the field of media literacy, and through service learning courses, she's Massachusetts. And also has completed work and his master's created media media education curricula for K through 12 schools, highly important task there also as a lecturer in the program at Penn State University, and he's taught at communications department at Bryant University, and she's developed departments literate media literacy curriculum, and Cleveland State University, University of Texas at Austin, has been an active member in the NAMLE, which is stands for National Association of media literacy education. Wonderful close to my area, and has won a Teaching Excellence Award there group there. And Susan also instructs on media and cultural topics for external programs at the University of Rhode Island, and has taught a number of college courses, and writes at UT, and has also served at San Jose State University, where monthly newsletters, including one that I discovered last night called Baby Boomerang. And she also has received a number of he was named president scholar as the university's outstanding awards, including Brian's excellence in teaching on to Dr. Stanley Baran.

Susan Beauchamp: 2:58

Thank you, Tim. And thank you for those researcher, and is also was also awarded a Fulbright scholar at in Germany, and also has published 10 books and scores of scholarly articles, and has sat on editorial boards of six scholarly journals, and his work has been translated into half a dozen languages. So with that said, we're going to dive right into our conversation today. Welcome Susan and welcome Stanley. introductions!

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 4:10

We have a topic that we want to sign up kind of circle back around to. We'll have an open conversation, and just let our listeners, you know, know that we're we're all colleagues here, and we're all teaching in an ever changing, vast array of media topics, relative also to the human being and how they develop themselves interpersonally and within their, their, their intellect, their their, emotional and social intellectual abilities really do intersect with their ability to navigate the media landscape today. So our topic is decoding the feed social media and critical thinking. Okay, so in today's information age, social media. Is, yes, a very powerful tool for communication, as we know, and for learning, but it's also rife with misinformation. There's this, this discussion that we're going to have will address ways in which to equip students with the critical thinking skills needed to navigate social media. Okay, so we'll start off with you, Susan, and tell us about your previous work, career experience and background that has led you to co author this, this text that we have also here with sage, and just kind of walk us through, what, what, what, what transpired through your life in and helped you to write a book like this?

Susan Beauchamp: 5:48

Sure. Thanks, Tim, and thank you to the entire sage team. Yeah. So, so, as you mentioned, I spent the first few decades of my career as a journalist. It's just in my DNA. You know, I'm a broadcast journalist. I've done some print journalism, and I so I spent a lot of time in the trenches of media. And right around the late 80s, I noticed a real change in the way news was being done. Specifically, it was becoming a little more inconsequential. You know, sensationalism started to rear its ugly head. And, you know, and so the way we were addressing news and doing news and doing journalism changed quite a bit. And so I took a step back, and I thought, you know, I think I want to be critical of this. I think I want to as a journalist again, you know, question myself, question my my field, question journalism and how it was being done in the late 80s. So I decided to take a step back. I went back to grad school, and I decided to get a degree in, an advanced degree in media literacy and education. So I got into teaching, and that's what, you know, I spent the next 20 years of my career consulting school systems, K through 12 systems on media literacy stuff, and designing the media literacy curriculum at Bryant. And it's, it's been, you know, very meaningful for me. And now in this post pandemic era, I'm finding that the landscape in higher education is changing. So, you know, we need to, you know, to go into hyperdrive on the critical thinking and the media literacy stuff. And so ultimately, my chair at Bryant University said to me, you know, none of us like the Introduction to Communication book that we're using. Would you do a sort of survey of the discipline to see what was out there? And I did, and we couldn't find one that matched the, you know, the objectives of our department. So I said to Stanley, how about we write one? So he said, Sure, why not? So that's, that's what we did, and it addressed all of the things that we felt were important in this current climate, media literacy, health communication, intercultural communication, you know, digital communication, all that, that stuff that really was absent, but, but more importantly, we we had as driving themes this personal responsibility, cultural responsibility, ethical responsibility, you know, empathy, accountability, all of these things became driving themes to this book that ultimately was meant to, you know, improve students in terms of their communication skills and their critical thinking skills and their ability to make meaning in their culture, in a very difficult culture, it's

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 8:43

Awesome. Stanley, do you have anything to add to that? This is a wonderful opening to our nice conversation here.

Stanley Baran: 8:50

Sure. And again, thank you for the nice introduction. I you know, by grad school training, I was a mass comm person, but when you talk about media effects. The whole we used to debate, oh, media have effects. They have no effects. And really, one of the problems with that debate was, if you talk about, do media cause...media don't cause anything. Media interact with how you were raised, how you watch, how literate media literate you are. And what became apparent to me was you can't teach media without teaching things like identity, things like, how do you make meaning? You can't teach human communication or interpersonal communication without teaching about the media, like, if you and I were to get into an argument, where would the models for how we engage in that argument come from? You know, you were raised the way you were raised. I was raised the way I was raised, but you probably watched the same movies and the same television that I watched, and this was the problem we found. And when we looked at the available intro, Intro to human comm books, how do you talk about relationships without talking about, where do we see relationships? In the media? How do you talk about what it's like to work in a big, giant organization? Well, if you're 18 year old college student. What you know about working in big organizations is what you saw on the office and all of the other television shows that you've watched. So when we set about to do the book, we wanted very much to make the point that your identity is shaped in communication, your perception of the world is shaped in communication. Through communication, you create the world that you're going to live in. In training, we were both Mass Comm people, but what we realized is you cannot teach how to be a functioning, meaningful, contributing member of this culture without a wider knowledge of the relationship between how we live our everyday lives and what we consume on these screens.

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 11:11

That's wonderful. I love the I love the intersectional trend that we're that we're talking about here when it comes to human communication and relating to each other, right? In a, in a in a place where we have to, we have to work together. This conversation, I think, lends to that intersection of how, how does, how do humans develop their perception of the world through those social interactions, but also through their media consumption, right? And so I love the question that is posed, how do we begin to understand the complex world and our place in it? And it's through communication, right? And that communication, the definition of that, expands into the human being, establishing who they feel they really are in the societal place that they find themselves in. So identity is really key. And I love that you both spoke about this, this idea of of intersecting mass communication training, right, and education with media literacy, and if you can become a person that practices some form of critical thinking self restraint, and then the ability to, obviously, to sift, locate key information, is going To allow you to progress in your human communication skills, right? So they're, they're, they're two in one, right? And I love it. I think this is, this is excellent. So I wanted to ask kind of a another lead in question related to our topic today, and it's, it's the complexity that young folks, or even even people like us, right, who are trying to navigate through the spaces of today and then simply with the goal of getting good, reliable information. Because most of my students, when I ask the question, how do you get information that is new to you, right? So how do you get your news? And majority of the students, and this also is backed by some, you know, Pew Research, stuff that I find, and just kind of locating these, you know, the data behind this, right? The students are gravitating to social media for their news of the day, right? And so what? What special tactics do social media platforms use to make it difficult for students to assess information and even access information that is accurate, that's reliable and that's credible?

Susan Beauchamp: 14:00

How much time do you have? Tim, that's like a three encyclopedia question. So yeah, so look, so we really have to address it sort of in general terms, since we're on a time limit. But you know, to start, you know social media platforms a product of the internet. We know this, which, of course, is an endless source of information, misinformation, disinformation, trying to navigate, you know, such a an overwhelming landscape. Is daunting, right? It's a daunting task. So you know, let alone trying to determine, you know, what's accurate, what's not accurate, what's real, what's not real. So sort of in this futility of trying to retrieve meaningful information, we seek instead, this instant gratification, right, which, of course, is, is not very useful. However, the social media platforms, they love it. I mean, this is a great advantage to internet platforms who, you know, obviously track our usage and then employ these algorithms that feed into those preferences, our personal preferences. And what that does is it confirms our biases, right, rather than offering us diverse and useful content. This has also had a huge impact on on, you know, important human characteristics, Tim, like, empathy, accountability, because we need critical thinking to develop those things, right? We know this. And for critical thinking, we need productive discourse, right, which we currently don't have. So what we need is to be exposed to more than just our own perspectives, but with these algorithms and these social media platforms, you know, we're not getting anybody else's perspectives. It's just ours. So by definition, we can't possibly consider the other person. And that's where, that's where we, you know, come into problems, and that's what we have to recognize if we're going to even begin to navigate this landscape of information, which is, again, a sea of overwhelming things, you know, that that we can't possibly deal with. And we do feel like it's a futile task.

Stanley Baran: 16:21

There's a ton of writing on this. And let's start with Facebook, which was really the first big, successful social media site. They consciously, willingly, knowingly created their format to give you little dopamine hits. I mean, they designed it from the beginning, admittedly, to get people addicted. The whole thing about likes and shares that was designed to give you that little shot. Oh, somebody liked this. Oh, somebody wants to read what, what I said, and that gives you literally, a physical reaction that makes you want it again, makes you want it again. And sure, Sue's absolutely correct, they use the algorithms, because they know what's succeeding with you, so they give you that over and over again. And Instagram is now introduced a thing called friend ranking, so you can see how many friends your friends have. I mean, tell me this isn't designed specifically to feed you into, "Oh, I gotta keep pumping. I gotta keep pumping. I gotta keep giving materials that people like, so I move up in the ranking." So that's on the micro level. On a more macro level, social media are designed, by definition, to thwart critical thinking, we have to distinguish between misinformation and disinformation. There's a ton of stuff out there, like Sue said, and some of it is misinformation. But sometimes people get things wrong. Misinformation is wrong. Disinformation is intentionally distributed. False information, not designed to persuade you to a different point of view, but it's designed to destroy the entire notion of there being an objective reality. So when you want to, even when we talk to our students, if they find themselves in a world where, no matter how good a teacher you may be, the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is not real becomes impossible. So how do you how do you bring critical thinking to a massive content which in part, if not largely, designed to circumvent your critical thinking. But there are, there are actors out there consciously trying to make sure that no matter how well we teach, people will not be able to distinguish between what is real and what isn't in effectively making critical thinking impossible.

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 19:09

That's amazing. And I it helps to give me some confirmation of some of the conversations we've had in class and sort of the the lead ins of the day. And I love these in class, because we talk about the real issues in some of, some of which students are privy to and they're aware of because they are reading the hard, sort of boring, what they deem as boring news. But it's, it's probably the most important news that that impacts your daily life, like local or national or even state news, policies, laws that come into play in cases that are being held, and when you bring that to the forefront, it really does allow that particular learning space to celebrate, really, what, what is the essenceof your philosophies here, which is personal, social, political responsibility, empathy for the other, right? And this is really what I think allows for our students to thrive when it comes to their their learning experiences. You know, at the end of the day, let's, let's learn how to be better human beings right to one another. And yes, I love the macro and micro perspectives here. I love the the idea here, that you know, whenever students are are are trying to demystify or have some create some sense of clarity with information that we, that we, that we consider those, those historical contexts of these news bureaus that existed, have existed, and yes, maybe have led themselves astray with some sensational journalism tactics over the years due To the attention economy, right? But there are established institutes and allowing students to to to go in and look at the totality of work from some of these information gathers and allow themselves to make decisions. Because one of the really useful things that I've used in my courses, the ad Fontes site, which basically tracks as many sites as they can in regards to reliability and media bias. So we have a wonderful time with that, and it really helps to to establish some sense of sanity here, right? And a way to gage right, the reliability of several sources when you're out there looking for news and information. And so this is, this is a good discussion, I think, too, when we come back to this decoding aspect here, decoding the feed. I think a lot of what happens here is when, when we have these conversations in class, we can begin to decode, not just through awareness of what's going on behind the scenes and the algorithms, but allowing the students to have this, this sense of agency, right, that they can refine those feeds, that they can curate those feeds as best as they can to ensure that their feed is, you know, something like I tell my students, a practical thing you can do today is go and follow the San Antonio Express News and as part of your Twitter experience, right? Because, if we think about these social media platforms, they're like lunch plates, and you have a blank slate when you start it. Yes, there may be some, some things you're you're sort of lured to. But if you have that media literacy and that agency, will come with, you know, with allowing you to design and engineer as much as you can, what that experience is going to be like if you decide that's where you want to get your your news and information from. But again, kind of harking back to this intersection right between the bad experience and how it, you know, influences your perception of the world, how it helps to, you know, construct meaning for you when you're out there socializing with other human beings, that's, it's, it's, that's, that's the intersection that we're talking about here. So I love this conversation. Let me kind of harp on that piece again here for a minute and just kind of throw this question out there, and you both feel free to to take it in whatever direction you'd like, but, but considering those specific tactics that we've talked about relative to, you know, social media platforms, you know, how does that beyond those, those factors, what are the factors make it so difficult to bring critical thinking to social media, news and information as we know it is always changing, and in we have a new platform that seems to sort of get the whack a mole from politicians known as Tiktok. And so what are your thoughts here moving forward as we, as we kind of, you know, preview the next three to five years with these social media platforms becoming much more savvy with, you know, with their with their algorithm?

Susan Beauchamp: 24:37

Yeah, so, so Tim, getting back to the whole agency thing. I think it's really important that students feel like they have agency that, however, is getting harder and harder for them to realize media users, like students, young people, they're inclined and even us in our. Our age, we tend to be inclined and gravitate toward content and opinions that you know support our own personal values and beliefs, right? And social media platforms are only too happy to accommodate that selective attention, right? So as a result, we have to understand right out of the gate that our own biases have to be considered if we're going to use these platforms optimally to our benefit. Okay, here's where the problem comes in. The culture makes that very, very difficult, because all the negative aspects of the Internet are sort of reinforced and facilitated by the culture. It's like this, this feedback loop, right? So, how did the how does the culture make that difficult? Well, for one thing, I mean, I have a number of reasons why, how the culture contributes to the to that a number of factors, beginning with lack of self awareness. You know, to have agency, you need to be self aware. We have a culture that tries to push on us who we should be, what we should buy, how we should act or react. You know, trying to define us. You know, through beauty standards and all other other things. You know, in advertising and marketing, you know, they try to tell us who we are. So the more we get away from that sense of who we are, the harder it is to, you know, to think critically about what's going on out there. The harder we need self awareness in order to make those assessments to know who we are. The culture makes that hard. The culture confirms our biases right again, with these algorithms and the Internet and tracking what we're doing, and you know, what we like, what we don't like, it, the culture makes it very difficult to deviate from our own biases. So that's another component. Also. I get back to this sort of emotion based thinking, right? We are, we are being told to react emotionally to everything and and the problem with that is, in you know, we're not reacting to content based on logic and reason. That's problematic, right? So the culture supports that emotional reasoning, that emotional thinking, lack of curiosity. Again, I said it at the beginning. I'm a journalist. It's in my DNA, so it is, you know, natural for me to be a skeptic. I think the culture doesn't promote curiosity the way it should. I think curiosity is so important in learning, and that lack of curiosity is supported by the culture which makes, again, it difficult group think. You know, we all, I don't know how if you've ever taught about group think in your classes, but I we think a lot about that, because I've talked to students who have said so often that the culture puts so much pressure on them to think a certain way, to to believe certain things, and so they fall in line because it's easier, right? It's easier. It's less daunting to take on the task of standing out as the different opinion. You know, they don't want to be that standout opinion. They so they fall in line. It's just too overwhelming time pressure. You know, I talk a lot about attention span in my classes and how social media platforms have and culture, you know. So again, both social media platforms and culture are very much alike. In this regard, everything's about, you know, moving from one thing to the next, quickly, moving from one piece of content to the next, quickly reducing our attention span and forcing us into multitask mode, never spending a significant amount of time on any one thing, so we're not spending enough time in the thought process and the critical thinking process as result, as a result of that, you know, egocentric thinking. I mean, you don't have to, you know, be Einstein to see what's going out on an American culture, you know, we have a very egocentric way of thinking about things. If you look at the technology, iPhone, Facebook, me.com, you know, these are all narcissistic technologies named for, you know, concern for the individual, not for the culture, not for the lot, the greater good, right? It's all about me, all about me. And then also assumptions, you know, assumptions of the enemy of critical thinking, right? And the culture, along with the internet, which is its own mainstream culture, I like to say, you know, force us to make assumptions about things because we're not, again, we're not using any critical thought process. And in fact, those assumptions become the enemy of critical thinking. And those assumptions are, you know, cultural assumptions are, you know, promoted through both vehicles, the culture and. The Internet. And then finally, you know, and again, we talk about this in intercultural communication, the intolerance and arrogance that exists that's that's innate in our culture right now with this political polarization, and you know, all of the problems we face now. You know, in making conscious decisions to be empathetic, to participate in other cultures, to understand other people, this intolerance and this arrogance is, you know, again, a domineering voice in the culture and through social media platforms. So not to belabor any of the points, but I think the bottom line is as a culture, and again, getting back to the idea of this theme of cultural responsibility,as a culture, we bear responsibility in recognizing that none of this is healthy for a flourishing society. So as a culture, we need to be reflective.

Stanley Baran: 31:01

Tim, you at least 10 times. I didn't count them, but you mentioned trying to make your students understand they have agency. That's that's what this book, our book, is about. You can be in control of your world if you want it, if you want to be but the way you get agency is you exercise agency. So this is you are preaching to the choir here, but with regard to what's out there, that makes it even tougher to bring critical thinking to the world in which we live, or to the information we consume beyond what the sites themselves are doing. But if, if the social media sites rife with mis and disinformation, and the goal of disinformation is to make you believe there is no objective truth. So kind of go with your gut. You say to your students, well, go read the San Antonio newspaper. When I was at UT University of Texas, the San Antonio paper in the Austin's paper in Texas Monthly, in the case of a magazine, absolutely wonderful outlets, and it would be wonderful if the students could go there. But what's happening to those traditional they have been decimated by the very same social media sites that have replaced them as news sources. They've decimated advertising revenue, national, reasonable and regional, and increasingly now local advertising. So these media, traditional media, which would help students have agency, they're being gutted at the same time, the purveyors of misinformation want you to distrust them. Oh, that's fake news. You can't trust them. So if you can convince a student take control, where does the student go? That's something out there that is amplifying the power of the social media sites to damage our critical thinking.

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 33:20

I think that's a great leeway into the last part of our of our conversation, which is leverage, right? And I think the term leverage has been used, especially in some of the circles I've been in, relative to utilizing the latest technologies to learn AI being the latest. But that's a topic for another day. But I want to kind of harp on just how might students, where do they go? Where do they go? In reference to what we've been discussing, we know, we know of the risk factors, and I think the culture and the risk industry, if you will, is is pertinent in the, in the in the minds of parents. I mean, I'm a parent to a 14 year old boy and who who doesn't have social media quite yet and so, but like, there's also, there's also an opportunity conversation to be had. And I think oftentimes, teaching my son about ways to to leverage and those opportunities, because there is good information that you can find again, you have to, you know, engineer that for yourself, and it takes work. But where do students go? How can they leverage the tools they have today to continue their lifelong learning?

Susan Beauchamp: 34:45

Oh, okay, so, so, yeah, media literacy, media literacy, media literacy, right? I think that one of the one of the big issues we face in our culture right now, and you know, it's well documented. Presented is that, you know, K through 12 teachers are even college teachers are not necessarily trained to deal with the onset of media content, and they're certainly not trained in media literacy well enough. So you know, we in order to get students to have choices in in, you know what choices they make for themselves with regard to being better citizens? And you know, knowing where to go to get truth, to get information, we have to, we have to give them a foundation. So we have to start there, right? You know when, when illiteracy was, you know, a part of our culture and books came onto the scene. We taught literacy. You know, media is the text of choice now for young generation. So we have to teach media literacy. It's a critical part of you know what it means to live in our culture now. So, so, so we have to give them that structure to begin with. So we have to start there. You know, again, you know, as a journalist, I think it's important that, I think, wouldn't it be great if we required all students to take a course in journalism. What does that look like? You know, what does it look like for every student to be curious, to learn to be curious, to learn to be skeptical, to learn to be resourceful, always. You know, on everything, I think that would be a great benefit. So that's, that's one way as an educator I would like to leverage things is to is to bring those kinds of of curricula back to educational structures for everybody, not just for journalism majors or communication majors, but for everybody. I also think that we need not to look at the internet and social media in such extremes, students have to be taught that it isn't, oh, it's a Pandora's box that's releasing all these evils, or, on the other side, it's the best tool that we've ever that's ever been invented. You know, my dad used to say, somewhere in the middle lies the truth, right this moderation and how we approach things, how we think of things. I see the internet as an opportunity to engage in a massive exercise in critical thinking, a constant, daily digital lesson plan, and that's how I how I describe it to my students. Don't look at it as an evil thing or a wonderful thing. Look at it objectively, as a way for you to better yourself, to question it, to be curious about it, you know, to question as an opportunity to question your world, to question your culture, to question yourself, right? Always asking the questions, engaging in critical thinking, dialog, diverse perspectives. What all of these steps force students to do is accept that in a successful culture, these antagonistic voices contribute to a very healthy discourse. Right? We need those antagonistic voices. We need people to oppose us. It forces us to broaden our perspective, make others and ourselves accountable, you know, to question relevance, to question credibility. You know, it's just a really important aspect of engaging in dialog and in discourse in the textbook. Again, you know, this is the whole purpose of the personal responsibility theme, teaching students to make conscious decisions and to get the most out of digital tools and experiences, right? That's what ultimately they need to do. I take responsibilities for themselves. Look, we live in a culture where students every day, or make at least my students, they make a conscious decision, you know, to be physically healthy, right? They exercise, they eat, right? You know, they make these decisions for themselves. We need to put more emphasis on on emotional and mental health. You know when, if you know the being on the online is making you anxious, then get offline, you know, give yourself a break, make those conscious decisions to enhance your physical and mental health. I mean, you're, sorry, your mental and emotional health, just like you would your physical health. So I again, this all to me gets back to, you know, students being taught, what do you want to achieve and what do you need to get there? And in this case, they definitely need more tools to do that.

Stanley Baran: 39:50

Media literacy! The answer is, media literacy. In fact, about a month ago, the California led. Legislature mandated media literacy education K through 12. So there are now four states, including Texas, your state, Tim, California, New Jersey, and I don't have it in front of me, what the fourth one is that mandate K through media literacy in the K through 12 education curriculum, and so to Sue's point, that means they're going to have to teach the teachers to teach media literacy all 50 states. Well, the 46 other somewhere in their rules about curriculum, they mentioned media literacy. Oh, you should do it. It'd be nice to touch on it, but four are already there. So media literacy is clearly the answer. One of the things I do, I try to make my students understand all media. But here we're talking social media, a double edged sword. You know, it carries a lot of good and it carries a lot of bad, and you can use this wealth of information and experience to actually foster critical thinking. Social media and the internet provide so much material, so much opportunity to become more empathetic, to become more aware, to give you greater opportunity to exercise your agency. So how do you do it? Here are some steps. One, seek different perspectives. If there are a million points of view out there, look at those different points of view. Expose yourself to different sites. Expose yourself to different levels. Look at what your friends are saying, but look at what the local newspapers saying. Look at what the regional newspapers, the regional news sites, are saying so, seek to diverse perspectives. Number two, ask questions. Don't be a passive consumer. In our media literacy chapter, we draw a distinction between passive consumers, but we even go past active consumers to talk about proactive consumers actually using this content to challenge this content. And in that chapter, by the way, we reproduce the media literacy questions from namely, the National Association for media literacy education, it instructs you to question the producers question the creators question yourself. It's a they, I think they first introduced it 20 years ago, and they keep updating it, but it's still really a wonderful way to bring questions to the media content that you're investigating. Number three, there are other people on social media, so engage in dialog. And this isn't scream at them, because the anonymity of social media or the internet allows you to be insulting or rude, but ask them why they believe what they believe. Ask them to consider what you have to say. So there are these people out there to talk to. Number four, which is, of course, the hallmark of critical thinking. Examine your own thinking. Why do I believe this? Why do I think this? We got to get out of our information silos that social media encourage. We one of the themes of our book is that your identity and your attitudes are absolutely intertwined. So maybe a question to ask yourself is, why is it so important to me, to my sense of who I am to believe that this is true when, objectively and intellectually, I know when I need to be questioning this more. Five, apply your learning. You've learned stuff from from the internet. You've learned what's good, what's bad, who's responsible, who's not responsible? Another theme of our book, you are a different person in this instant than you were two minutes ago. Because in those two minutes you've heard other people talk, you've had you've you're simply a different person because it's now two minutes later in your life, apply what you've learned, you're not a an infant every time you log on, you're now that much more experienced. And finally, keep learning and and Suehit on this, learn something and apply what you learn. It is tough out there. And and Tim, you challenge your kids to go look at the newspaper and see how it approaches these stories, this information differently the day. The danger is it's so tough that people, and when we're talking about students, students want to give up because it is the easiest thing in the world to give up, but to make them understand that it through their agency, they can, in fact, create a better situation where the ease of giving up, that's not the easiest path.

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 45:34

Amazing stuff. As my students would say, let them cook. Let them cook. I love how just by reading--

Stanley Baran: 45:43

Yeah, because, because they don't want to talk! They figure as long as you're cooking, they're sitting looking at the clock!

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 45:50

I tell them, I'll cook, but you have to give me the ingredients. Yeah, their fingers are on the pulse, on this stuff, and serving as a as a wonderful guide. And I love these steps here. They're very concrete, and it actually, you know, helps to establish a way to begin that decoding process. We talked a lot about awareness. We talked a lot about identity. This, actually, this, this conversation, is helping me with, with not just being a teacher in my practice, but also a parent, right? Because there is no textbook on parenting that's, you know, that's that's going to give me all the the tips that I need daily with my son. And so media literacy is definitely the the answer to a lot of the things that I'm personally dealing with as a parent as well. So again, I love that, that piece of you know, apply your learning, right? And we are different. We have learned something within I know I have, within the last 45 minutes or so.

Stanley Baran: 47:04

You're not the same person that you were 45 minutes ago.

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 47:09

That's so that's so awesome. Is there anything else that you would like the listeners to know about you, your work, or anything that where they can find you?

Susan Beauchamp: 47:19

I guess I just, I just want to sort of wrap up what I've been saying in my, you know, in my research and in my classes, you know, with regard to to this culture and this digital culture that we now must contend with. I the media literacy thing, it's critical. I mean, critical thinking is so important. But just to wrap it up, I, you know, as educators, we we need to accomplish some stuff, right? We need to teach students to take responsibility for their own consumption choices. That's a that's a big one, right there. We need to teach students that, you know, media in all forms are texts to be read and interpreted and critically assessed. We need to teach students that the internet is not innately villainous. It's how we choose to use it that determines its worth and its danger, right? And students need to be reflective about the kind of world they want to live in and how their personal choices impact that world. That is, again, a big driving theme in our writing. You know, if one size says it's raining and the other size side says it's dry, it's not your job as a journalist to report both sides, right? It's your job to look out the window. So I would just wrap all this up by telling educators, teach your students to look out the window.

Tim Molina, Sage Faculty Partner: 48:54

I love it. That's, you know. And I asked the question to my students, it this is the sky still blue, because I think it is. And so let's, let's dive into that and figure out why that may be even a simple question. In today's world, some might think otherwise. And so let's talk about that I love. I love bringing in that historical context with students related to our world today and how it's been filtered through the media over, you know, over a century now, of course, and so again. Thank you all for being here and helping us to you too. Yeah, all right. Well, join us again. We are wrapping this podcast up, but tune in later and you'll be experiencing more dynamic talks, interdisciplinary intersections between mass communication, human communication and the like. And I'm just honored, and thank you again, Susan and Stanley for joining me here today.

Stanley Baran: 50:01

You were wonderful. Thank you, Tim.

Susan Beauchamp: 50:02

You're awesome. Thank you. Bye.