Social Media Evaluating Sources

By Jenni Jacobs

GETTING COLLEGE STUDENTS TO UNDERSTAND INFORMATION LITERACY CAN BE A TOUGH TASK. Using social media is an easy way to relate information literacy to something that students, faculty, staff, and community patrons use daily. When thinking about information consumption and how students interact with information, it can be said that students categorize information into three different camps:

• This information is correct/from a source I trust so I believe it.

• This information is from an unknown source and so needs investigation, and

• This information is not something I believe and therefore is discarded.

This is a very simplified way of looking at information consumption, but it’s easy to hypothesize that many people use only categories one and three while using social media. This leads many to disregard authoritative information and, oftentimes, to share misinformation. The phenomenon of sharing incorrect or misleading information has always taken place on the internet, but in recent years it has exploded, especially in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic. With most social media networks, users can easily scroll and consume thousands of bits of information hourly without even realizing that the information is being consumed.

To help students to understand how they consume information, my co-teacher and I created a midterm assignment that gets students to think critically about the information they consume via social media.

This assignment came before ever discussing evaluating sources of information and therefore was made to get students to think critically before being taught various methods of evaluating sources. It’s important to note that most instruction when it comes to evaluating sources focuses on scholarly types of sources, i.e., peer-reviewed journals, newspapers or magazines. While this is a valid way of teaching information literacy, it lacks relevance when it comes to consuming information outside of these sources. For this exercise, we constructed the midterm to focus on multiple types of social media asking students to evaluate whether the information presented in short three-minute-and-under videos was accurate, authentic, and could be trusted.

Students were asked to evaluate the information given and explain why they believed the information could be seen as either unbiased and truthful, or whether the information was biased and therefore, potentially inaccurate.

After their presentation of the information and their evaluation of it, we encouraged students to discuss the video and the information presented. Through this discourse, it was hoped that students could think critically about the information presented through a platform they use. It’s interesting to note that many students chose information they considered unbiased and accurate while only two students chose to display information they were presented that did not come across as unbiased and accurate.

For example, one student who was researching animal testing in the makeup industry chose to show a video made by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). They presented the information as accurate and authoritative. During discussion, we asked whether PETA was an unbiased organization and if they decided to research whether what they were talking about was actually accurate. The student did a minimal amount of research using the PETA website which turned into a teaching moment talking about biases and how factual information can be twisted towards agendas. Students agreed that the information given in the video did seem to be leaning one way instead of just informing people about the subject. It also brought up the idea of using emotions to manipulate audiences. This transitioned into the next class period where we discussed misinformation and fake news and how emotions play into information literacy.

Another student chose a video where various images of beautiful places were shown with the caption “Those who say Lubbock isn’t beautiful”. The student presented this information as false because none of the photos where of places in or around Lubbock but instead was a video that could be shown to those who don’t know what Lubbock looked like. The student pointed out that many of the places shown were in different states as they investigated by Googling for the images shown. It was a great representation of how imagery can be used to misinform those who did not want to investigate the images. This video was the perfect example of how people, especially students, can casually scroll through information and directly or indirectly consume information that is inaccurate.

I believe that many students chose information they believed was accurate. We are all constantly scrolling past different posts and we tend to disregard information we do not see as useful or we do not believe. While this is not a bad thing, it does bring up the concern of how newer students are interacting with information, both good and bad and how we as information specialists can teach students how to critically think about the information they’re consuming.