{"id":4717,"date":"2023-09-12T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-12T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspire\/?p=4717"},"modified":"2023-09-14T14:10:58","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T21:10:58","slug":"media-literacy-in-the-age-of-ai-part-ii-a-review-of-verified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspire\/2023\/09\/12\/media-literacy-in-the-age-of-ai-part-ii-a-review-of-verified\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Literacy in the Age of AI, Part II: A Review of Verified"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the first part of this post, please see Media Literacy in the Age of AI, Part I: \u201cYou Will Need to Check It All.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just how, exactly, we\u2019re supposed to follow Ethan Mollick’s caution<\/a> to \u201ccheck it all\u201d happens to be the subject of a lively, forthcoming collaboration from two education researchers who have been following the intersection of new media and misinformation for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online<\/a><\/em> (University of Chicago Press, November 2023), Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg provide a kind of user\u2019s manual to the modern internet. The authors\u2019 central concern is that students\u2014and, by extension, their teachers\u2014have been going about the process of verifying online claims and sources all wrong\u2014usually by applying the same rhetorical skills activated in reading a deep-dive on Elon Musk or Yevgeny Prigozhin, to borrow from last month\u2019s headlines. Academic readers, that is, traditionally keep their attention fixed on the text\u2014applying comprehension strategies such as prior knowledge, persisting through moments of confusion, and analyzing the narrative and its various claims about technological innovation or armed rebellion in discipline-specific ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Problem with Checklists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now, anyone who has tried to hold a dialogue on more than a few pages of assigned reading at the college level knows that sustained focus and critical thinking can be challenging, even for experienced readers. (A majority of high school seniors are not prepared for reading in college, according to 2019 data<\/a>.) And so instructors, partnering with librarians, have long championed checklists as one antidote to passive consumption, first among them the CRAAP<\/a> test, which stands for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose. (Flashbacks to English 101, anyone?) The problem with checklists, argue Caulfield and Wineburg, is that in today\u2019s media landscape\u2014awash in questionable sources\u2014they\u2019re a waste of time. Such routines might easily keep a reader focused on critically evaluating \u201cgameable signals of credibility\u201d such as functional hyperlinks, a well-designed homepage, airtight prose, digital badges, and other supposedly telling markers of authority that can be manufactured with minimal effort or purchased at little expense, right down to the blue checkmark made infamous by Musk\u2019s platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three Contexts for Lateral Reading<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the delights in reading Verified<\/em> is drawing back the curtains on a parade of little-known hoaxes, rumors, actors, and half-truths at work in the shadows of the information age\u2014ranging from a sugar industry front group posing as a scientific think tank to headlines in mid-2022 warning that clouds of \u201cpalm-sized flying spiders\u201d were about to descend on the East Coast. In the face of such wild ideas, Caulfield and Wineburg offer a helpful, three-point heuristic for navigating the web\u2014and a sharp rejoinder to the source-specific checklists of the early aughts. (You will have to read the book to fact-check the spider story, or as the authors encourage, you can do it yourself after reading, say, the first chapter!) \u201cThe first task when confronted with the unfamiliar is not analysis. It is the gathering of context\u201d (p. 10). More specifically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n