(upbeat instrumental music) - Welcome to "At Issue."

I'm H. Wayne Wilson.

Thank you as always for joining us, this time for a conversation about misinformation, about disinformation, and about the truth, and about a new state law or relatively new state law, the first year for high schoolers in Illinois to have a unit on media literacy.

We'll talk about all that in the upcoming half hour with the following four guests.

Let me introduce you first to Christy Semande.

She's a librarian at the Canton School District.

Thank you for being with us.

- My pleasure.

- [H. Wayne] Also with us in the studio, Carolyn Kinsella.

Carolyn is the Executive Secretary for the Association of Illinois School Library Educators.

- Yes.

- You may hear us refer to that as AISLE during the program.

Joining us by way of Zoom is Dr. Megan Hopper.

Dr. Hopper is the associate professor at the ISU School of Communication.

Megan, thank you for joining us.

- Thank you.

- And also with us, Dr. Yonty Friesem.

Dr. Friesem is an associate professor of Civic Media at Columbia College Chicago.

Yonty, thank you for joining us.

I opened up the show with misinformation, disinformation, and something called the truth.

Could you define for us, just to get us started the difference between misinformation, disinformation?

I think we know, well, maybe we don't even know what the truth is.

I'm not sure.

- Okay, misinformation is false information but it's not created or shared with the intent of causing harm.

Disinformation, the difference is that it's deliberately created to mislead and to cause manipulation of a group, of a social group, an organization, or even a country.

So it's a purposeful use of information to create chaos.

- To create chaos.

Carolyn, can you add some of the problems that this creates?

It's not just the misinformation but the disinformation that can really cause problems.

- Well, the chaos that comes, of course, is the divisiveness that that causes, the lack of civility of not believing what else is out there.

And because the cause, the reason for it is chaos, that then that incites people.

And that's never a good thing because what we really want, of course, is the truth.

And having that and having the understanding of what that is, is not easy, especially for students to know.

- So let me turn to Megan Hopper.

Megan, how do we decide what the truth is?

I know this is a difficult question but that's what we're hoping for is the truth or fact.

How do we go about doing that when there is so much out there on social media, wherever the source might be?

- Yes.

I think a key to that is practicing good media literacy and so doing the research on what sources you're consulting for the truth and what their motives are.

I think that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction when we have individuals purporting what they're presenting as truth but they have an agenda and they have a motive.

And so I think it is really important to consult multiple sources of information and to do your research on where this is coming from and who is behind the production of what they're claiming to be true.

- Carolyn, what Megan is referring to, is that lateral reading?

Is that a term we come across?

- Yes.

Lateral reading is reading more than just that one source, being able to expand it and say, is it supported by this?

Is it supported on this other side as well?

Or is where did that information come from?

Did the author actually do the study?

Are they getting the study from somewhere else?

Is there no facts to back it up at all?

That's the lateral reading.

Reading outside of that initial statement or piece of information.

- A relatively new term is malinformation where you take a truthful, a fact, something that can be proven, and you use it in a out of context or in a way that distorts the truth.

- So why, why do we, what's the benefit of having malinformation, disinformation?

What's the goal here?

Why would people do this?

And I have some thoughts on that, but... - I think there's any number of reasons.

But primarily there's financial gain, power, influence, it runs the gamut truly.

- Yonty, if I can turn to you now, quite often we blame social media, the rise of social media becoming more and more common, especially with the hearings in Washington DC on TikTok, et cetera.

But it's not just social media, is it, Yonty, that we have to be aware of?

- No, and it's not new.

The RAND Corporation has been running a project of truth decay, and they can show that, you know, you can go back to Nixon presidency and see the decline in the trust of institutions, but also in the news outlet.

And you can go also like fake news which we don't like to use that term, has a long, long history of people that has the information and might use it in different ways to misrepresent truth.

And so the fact of having media literacy skills is something that has been advocated for many years, and this is not a new thing that is happening.

This is something that people need to understand that when they're getting whatever messages, not just news, not just information, in movies, and it can be in social media, obviously, they need to really understand those critical questions that we've been starting to discuss here and understanding the differences between the information that they're getting and where is it from, why is it sent to me, and what will happen if I share that to my network?

- Yonty brings up an interesting point that even movies can be a source of misinformation.

It may not be disinformation at the time but then you use it and it may become disinformation.

- Well, there's always been historical fiction and things of that nature.

You know, current events that then are fictionalized, they take liberties with the story but people don't always understand that difference.

And I think that's part of it as well that those things become a part of who we are but we don't understand that they may be based on fact, but it's not fact.

- So I want to continue the conversation about solutions to disinformation and malinformation, whatever term you want to use.

But we've already talked about lateral reading, we've talked about, look at who this source is.

But sometimes it's just old information that can cause this.

But I'd like to turn to what we call clickbaiting.

What is clickbaiting?

Can we define clickbaiting to begin with?

And then if you want to turn to Carolyn, go ahead and define clickbaiting if you want.

- Clickbait is, and it can be anywhere, it's not always a negative source that wants you to clickbait.

Sometimes they put out, your news source puts out a the headline that says, stay tuned for blah, blah, blah and it has nothing to do with blah, blah, blah.

It's just that getting you to stay there or to click on it if it's a social media or in media.

And then it may lead you down to something else and something else and something else.

That's also part of the issue with clickbait is the fact that it wants you to not necessarily look at what fact is there but what they want you to look at and click on for oftentimes monetary gain, more clicks, more money.

- Yonty, let me come back to you to talk about one of the solutions and that is the media literacy law that was passed by the state of Illinois, the first in the nation, by the way, passed in 2021.

But the 2022-23, the current school year is the first year for public high schools to have a unit of education on media literacy.

Could you, before we start about the details of that, what does that, what's the essence there?

What is a unit of media literacy?

- Thank you, H. So I'm talking locally and also internationally to explain the innovative way that this law has been.

There has been some criticism that unit is not defined and what does that mean for a school administrator that they need to have a unit of instruction.

But if you look at the bright side, what it does it gives the power to the schools, to the teachers, to the community to decide do we really want to spend six months a year?

Do we want to spend only one hour?

What is the topic of media literacy?

Because media literacy is not a subject matter.

Media literacy is a pedagogy.

We're trying to advocate for all the teachers to use that.

But this is just the first step.

And the law allows us to communicate to the schools and the school have the power to decide, okay, I want to use the unit of instruction to teach about this topic that is critical to my community.

So the law basically is asking the schools to administrate that teaching of media literacy in some way, shape, or form, and the school will decide.

And we at the Illinois Media Literacy Coalition that we created as a result of the law are helping and supporting schools in doing that and offering a variety of ways of administrating that so that they can see what are their options.

- Megan, the law of course is directed to high school, public high schools in the state of Illinois.

What about at the university level at Illinois State University?

Do you have a component where you talk about media literacy or something similar to that?

I don't know that we've got Megan audio with us, so we'll come back to Megan in just a moment.

But let's go back to the law.

A little bit of background.

Several years ago, a student at Naperville Central High School by the name of Braden Hajer, just a high school student, said there's a problem here.

And so Braden put together a program for his teacher.

And the teacher was impressed with it and said, "Why don't you carry it forward?"

And he contacted Elizabeth Hernandez who is a state representative and she pushed the law and it became law effective in 2022-23, the current school year.

So let me first turn, let me first turn to you and ask you, Yonty was trying to, what's a unit of education, what does Canton School do to teach media literacy?

- It's primarily taught through our English classes.

I know, I do believe our freshman teachers are getting ready to start this unit in the next month or so.

And because we've started having conversations about what they're doing, how they're doing it in our PLC meetings.

And I think the law has really created an increased awareness on the critical nature of media literacy for really society right now.

And hopefully we're gonna continue to build that unit and then embed media literacy throughout the rest of our curriculums as well.

- But it's not a class per se.

It could be taught in any class- - Absolutely.

- Or multiple classes.

- Absolutely.

It's a concept that has far-reaching importance.

- [H. Wayne] Carolyn?

- That's where I think it should really be.

It's like everything else.

Like when we used to teach the research class, this is now called media literacy or the research lessons.

But it has to be taught when they do science research, it has to be taught when they do English papers, it has to be taught when they go into social studies, and they're trying to discern what part of the civil rights movement, you know, what angle am I looking at?

And who said that about the civil rights movement?

When did they say it?

So the media literacy, and even PE, they talk about what are current practices for fitness?

Well, who's saying that?

Is it somebody on TikTok with clickbait?

That's probably not the source that the teacher wants them to use.

So teaching media literacy as cross-curricular to be highly effective.

That's what it should be.

But that means that all the different departments need to get on board.

- And they need training on what it is and how to use it.

And hopefully the high school is just a starting point.

This is really, this needs to start with our littles because they are also using social media to a degree or internet resources, they're online watching commercials and it is important that we start them young.

- Let me turn to you, Megan.

- Yes, I think it's important to note that media literacy is something that should be a lifelong practice.

I think that the spread of misinformation, disinformation is a public health crisis.

I think there is also a lot to be said about the toll on individual's mental health that social media in general can have.

And so I think this is something that just like physical education and counseling on nutrition and financial education and financial health, this should be something that should be a lifelong practice and a lifelong exercise to have that goal in mind to be as media literate as possible and to be able to protect yourself from these possible negative consequences that can result from this.

- What Megan is saying reminds me of the term infodemic.

This is serious.

It's not just a casual, you know, well, we probably should teach a little bit about disinformation.

It's an infodemic.

- It is, and it's frightening.

And I think in this country we understand that it is something that needs to be done, now where it gets fit into the curriculum, that's not so easy to say because mandates don't always go over well, where will it be done?

And some administrators might say, well, we'll just put it in the English department and then we've crossed that off the list and we're done.

Instead of making it cross-curricular K-12 something that we understand is critical.

- Yonty, you were very helpful and involved in putting this law into place.

How's it working after almost one school year in high schools in Illinois?

- Yeah, thank you.

So first of all, I want to acknowledge that this was a collaborative work of not only neighborhood of high school, but AISLE, the Illinois School Librarian Association was very helpful in preaching the law media literacy now, there were a lot of different stakeholders who made it come be the law that it is.

And one of the thing that is really crucial to understand in the discussion that we have is that unlike New Jersey that in the last several months passed a law of information literacy K-12 that is only taught in the libraries, we opened up again to all subject matters.

And yes, we're only doing it for high school but the idea is that we're gonna work on legislation to have it for younger generation as well.

So it's something to really look at.

We're not just dealing with misinformation with media literacy, we're looking at wellbeing, we're looking at civics.

We are looking at how in different subject matters and how media impact our life because we are surrounded with media.

Media affects almost every aspect of our life.

And it's not just the information.

There's a lot of other things, as everybody was saying, that we need to be conscious about.

So to your question, what we're doing right now is we created the Illinois Media Literacy Coalition.

This is an organization that is voluntary.

We have 100 educators from across the state who are gathering once a month to figure out what are the ways to support educators.

One of the things that we did, we created a framework which is only several pages of PDF on our website.

We created a crosswalk which shows in different subject matters how you can address media literacy with your own subject matter standards.

So we have science, we have social science, we have library, we have computer literacy, social and emotional learning, English language arts, and we have resources for educators.

The next step that we're doing is providing free professional development for educators using community colleges and other higher ed institution that will be the place that teachers can either go physically or consume online so that they can be trained for free to teach media literacy in their schools.

- Megan, I imagine it's a lot easier to teach these types of courses in the school of communications.

Is there an effort at Illinois State University to make sure that students across the board at least get a flavor of the importance of media literacy?

- Yes.

So fortunately within the school of communication, we teach the basic speech course which is required of all students across the university.

And I know that those instructors teaching that course build in media literacy into their instruction on gathering facts for the speeches that students are required to give in that course.

And then of course, for our own majors we offer a course called news literacy.

And I am an instructor of that course and I have my students in groups create their own media literacy lesson plans that they would present to a certain target population whether that be K-12 students or even older individuals.

And I would love to partner with high schools to give them some feedback in terms of what my students think are the most important things that should be taught in a media literacy lesson.

Because they are at the forefront of being impacted by this media environment where there is so much overload of information.

- I'd like to go around the table, so to speak, including Yonty and Megan, has the environment that we see in mainstream media, on social media, with the government we have in lockstep the Democrats, in lockstep the Republicans, and there seems to be a big chasm in between.

Has that made it okay for us to go ahead and just believe whatever we read?

I mean, you know, the Republicans and the Democrats and so I tend to go this direction or that direction?

- I think it's added a lot of divisiveness to our country which I really haven't seen in my lifetime quite like this so intense, I don't think.

Maybe I have, but it's in my face right now.

And this divisiveness is an issue and it makes it hard for teachers, for people in the schools to have discussions on topics.

Even media literacy and trying to discern right from wrong.

Because if we say, well, you should watch this news and this news, don't only watch one, they go home, and they say that to their parents and they go, well, I'm only watching one.

Why should they tell you to watch another?

And so that divisiveness within our country makes it harder to, as one of the fifth tenets in the law itself, when I looked it up again, was respectful, thoughtful, inclusive dialogue over a specific issue.

It's supposed to be taught.

That's hard to teach right now.

And we try, teachers are working very hard, librarians are working very hard to do this and still keep their jobs.

- Yonty, you earlier mentioned going back to the Nixon administration when we had a divisiveness in the nation.

Whether that is as bad as it is today or worse, what are your thoughts in regard to, well, gee whiz, that's just the way things are now and I'm going to latch onto this disinformation because it supports my preconceived notion.

- Yeah, and I mean, we're in a different situation and Nixon didn't have a Twitter account, I don't want to think what would happen then.

But in any case, what's happening with media literacy is the importance of dialogue that was put in the law that I really insisted on the civics in it.

And what we want to do is to understand that to be media literate is to be socially responsible, to really understand and go back to a civil discussion.

So I can disagree with you, I can have a different political but I don't see you as my enemy.

I can sit down at a table and have a discussion, that can be emotional, not just factual because that always have been in political debate more emotions than facts, but it is respectful.

And that's part of media literacy.

Media literacy is about asking questions about looking at power, looking at what is fact and what is fiction, but also the emotional point on it.

And that's what needs to be taught also to engage, to be in discussion, not to be afraid of controversial issues but to really sit down and talk about it.

Where do I get it from?

Why do I get it?

How does it make me feel?

Okay, it makes you feel like this, it makes me feel like this.

Let's try to see where are we together because we are in one society.

- And Megan, your thoughts on whether or not it's more okay now to deal in this disinformation.

- Yes, I think that disinformation has led to a historical amount of polarization that has resulted in what my co-panelists have already talked about is this lack of civil discourse.

I think it also has intensified individuals wanting to be surrounded by an echo chamber.

And what I mean by that is instead of exercising full media literacy and consulting as many sources as possible, they only want to hear what they already believe.

- And with that, our half hour has concluded.

Let me say thank you to Dr. Megan Hopper of Illinois State University, and to Dr. Yonty Friesem of Columbia College Chicago for joining us on At Issue.

And here in the studio to Christy Semande who's a librarian at Canton School District, and to Carolyn Kinsella- - Thank you.

- Who's with the Association of Illinois State- - School Library- - School Library Educators.

AISLE.

- AISLE.

- That's why we stick with AISlE.

And we thank you for joining us for the conversation.

We'll be back next time with members of the state legislature.

We'll talk Republican and Democrat and issues facing the state of Illinois on the next At Issue.

(lively music) - [Crew Member] Good, got it.

- [H. Wayne] And likewise your camera over here.

- [Crew Member] Thank you.

- And me.

- [Crew Member] Got it.

Thank you everybody.

- Yonty, good to see you again.