This blog was co-authored by Chelsey Cartwright (Democracy Truth Project Manager, LWV), Eric Schurenberg (Founder, The Alliance for Trust in Media), and Ananya Misra (Mission Impact Intern, LWV).

American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” 

What those of us who care about the state of our democracy must face is that the information environment in which we all operate has changed drastically, irrevocably, and fundamentally. It is no longer a transparent or secure space. Traditional news organizations — those that, nominally at least, held themselves to standards of accuracy and objectivity — are losing ground. Social media has become a central news source for millions of our fellow citizens, especially the young. With the traditional gatekeepers in retreat, the ecosystem has become over-saturated with opinions, propaganda, outrage, and arrant nonsense, and many Americans have a hard time telling them apart from reliable news. You yourself may feel that you don’t know what to believe anymore. Who could blame you?  

Another thing we must face: in this new world, the burden of discerning what is true or false falls on each of us individually. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have not fully tried to correct harmful falsehoods on their platforms. Meta’s small programs, such as Community Notes, a way for people to add more context to confusing and misleading posts, or YouTube links to vetted information, play a small yet still inconsequential role in the spread of mis-, dis-, and mal-information. Nor can you expect much help from the remaining few worthy but overwhelmed organizations that try to quash rumors and propaganda. Even when fact-checkers zero in on a false claim, by the time they have tracked down reliable sources to disprove the claim and published the counter narrative, the news ecosystem has moved on. Studies suggest that very few of those exposed to the original falsehood will even see the correction. In fact, the continued influence effect dictates that many who see the correction simply won’t believe it. 

So the responsibility falls to us — as parents, friends, colleagues, and, above all, as citizens — to develop the skills needed to navigate a highly polluted information ecosystem. This is part of life in the digital era. It's easier today to summon a taxi, have food delivered, or watch Succession wherever and whenever you want. But it’s much harder to know whether a story you’re reading (or an image you’re seeing or a video you’re watching) is accurate. Whether you call this new skill media literacy, critical thinking, or foolproofing, it’s just one of those things you have to master today, like typing with your thumbs or shooting selfies or ignoring emails from a down-on-his-luck prince wanting to give you gold if you just send him your bank password. For better or worse, welcome to the 21st century. 

Building Your Media Literacy 

You CAN master this. The path to safeguarding yourself against manipulation has two parts.  

First, it’s helpful to understand the supply side of today’s transformed information marketplace: why news gets made the way it does and how it finds its way to you. When you understand the tactics and motivations of information providers, you can better distinguish between those you can reasonably trust and those you shouldn’t. 

Building mental immunity can be thought of as building up your “spidey sense” of when news doesn’t feel reliable. However, preparing ourselves to encounter false information is difficult when our supply of information is marred by bias. Research suggests that “attempts to correct misinformation and reduce its spread are most successful when the information comes from trusted sources and representatives, including religious, political, and community leaders.” The only way to effectively slow the impact of falsehoods is by using a consortium of trusted sources. After all, authorities can’t stop releasing falsehoods into the ecosystem. They certainly can’t eliminate them once they’ve begun to circulate. But you can stop them at the drawbridge of your mind with input from trusted and varied resources. You can recognize misleading claims and neutralize them before they can take root in your mind.  

Second, it’s also essential to understand how you process the news that comes across your feed. Like everyone else, you are susceptible to being misled – not because you’re gullible or immoral, but simply because of how the human brain is wired. You are far less vulnerable if you recognize your all-too-human weak points and how some actors might try to exploit them. For example, what are some topics that you are passionate about? Do you tend to overlook the other side when you encounter a single piece of evidence or commentary that supports your view? Thinking critically about your weak points is the essence of media literacy.  

Why go through the trouble of improving your media literacy? The answer is obvious when it comes to falsehoods about your family’s health or financial safety. When it comes to political messages, navigating your way to the truth can help you understand why people on the other side of the political divide think the way they do. Bridging this divide is key to making progress as a nation. Making decisions, like how to vote and which issues to advocate for, will be easier to think through when you are making them of your own accord, not because you were manipulated into furthering someone else’s partisan agenda. 

In future installments of this blog series, we’ll dive more deeply into understanding the supply and demand sides of today’s information ecosystem — that is, how the news gets made and how you process it. We’ll also follow up with information on how you can help bring this knowledge to your community. You can also check out our blog on identifying mis- and disinformation. 

It’s all part of training yourself — and the people you care about — to navigate our media landscape in the 21st century.