The Public Life Project
In Pursuit of Knowledge and Information
Special | 2mVideo has Closed Captions
How University of Minnesota faculty and students search for knowledge and information.
Today's online, social media, and news media landscape contribute to the proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, division, and polarization in society. In dialogue with students, University of Minnesota faculty discuss why this is the case and why it is so important for us to cultivate a constructive, engaged sense of media literacy.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
The Public Life Project is a local public television program presented by TPT
The Public Life Project
In Pursuit of Knowledge and Information
Special | 2mVideo has Closed Captions
Today's online, social media, and news media landscape contribute to the proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, division, and polarization in society. In dialogue with students, University of Minnesota faculty discuss why this is the case and why it is so important for us to cultivate a constructive, engaged sense of media literacy.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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- [Interviewer] Do you have a cell phone on you?
- I do, yeah, I do.
(relaxing music) - I think one of the biggest divides in this country has to do with where people get information from.
- [Interviewer] What types of news sources do you consume on your phone?
- I've been very into Reddit lately.
- The Wall Street Journal print edition.
- Twitter and Reddit.
(upbeat music) - How does the media, which is what I study, how does that sort of perpetrate and amplify some of the divides that we see, especially across that political spectrum.
- It's never really pretty to read those arguments online, whether it be Twitter or Instagram, Facebook.
- [Interviewer] Have you ever seen anything online that turned out to not be true?
- Oh yeah.
- There's lots of different dimensions to misinformation and disinformation and fake news.
For the most part, it's news that is meant to mislead.
- In the age of social media and digitization, we need to be diligent about doing the work ourselves, doing the research ourselves, taking the extra step.
- If you don't feel strongly that there's a source out there that you can trust for information, it can be really disorienting.
- We've seen this sort of polarization, not just of opinions, but a polarization of the media that people use to form their opinions.
- We can only interact with so many different types of people, and only know about so many things happening in the world.
We rely on others to do that kind of verifying and confirming of information.
- I think we are in a space right now where people don't know what is true and they don't know what is fake, and everything becomes debatable, everything becomes a source of debate, every fact becomes a potential opinion.
There's no resolution.
I think that that's exactly where we are right now.
I do think there's a way out by learning more, by trusting information, by verifying information, and by respecting other people's perspectives and knowing that they're different than fact.
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The Public Life Project is a local public television program presented by TPT