I’m sure this will vary for many people depending on their schools, where/when they were taught, and the like, so I’m interested to see what others’ experiences have been with this.
I’m also curious about what resources some have used to learn better research skills & media literacy (and found useful) if their school didn’t adequately teach either (or they may have whiffed on it at the time).
I’m in my mid 40s, high school in Missouri. I wouldn’t say they taught media literacy, and despite having a computer lab with the internet, it wasn’t considered.
Research was finding sources to cite for a paper and was a big chunk of the grade in English one year. They did cover what were considered reputable sources, but that meant published non-fiction, news reports, and maybe firsthand accounts (consider the source reputation). They seemed to assume we knew the difference between, say, a real newspaper and a tabloid, or the difference between Channel 5 News and Jerry Springer. The idea that the NY Times or Channel 5 News might have bias in how they presented things, and in what they chose to present, wasn’t considered at all.
Since this was taught in English, it was much more about using proper citations, not full plagiarism, and writing persuasively. I know I couldn’t find enough actual books on my topic in the school or public libraries, so I padded my reference list with the list the encyclopedia used. It worked fine.
To be fair, I do still use questions i learned from that research paper to evaluate info. am I seeing the same info across multiple sources, including high quality ones? can I trace it to an original source, and how much do I trust that source? can I find several high quality, independent sources for a particular thing?
Your last paragraph is such an important one. One of the things I see most is people citing a source, but then the sources their source cites may be dubious at best. It’s so important to be able to keep going backwards in sourcing. Where did every little piece of information come from? Humans make mistakes, sometimes data can get misunderstood or corrupted over time. A mistake in the past may result in printing a falsehood that’s generally accepted as true in the future. People often struggle following a path of information gathering beyond the first few steps. I do think that traces back to, like you said, we were taught what were reputable sources (NYT vs National Enquirer) but never given any knowledge that their might be bias even in our trusted sources. So many people, instead of considering where the information is sourced when it comes to outlets with a “reputable” history, just stop at “it was in the New York Times” as if they haven’t had their share of scandals (like when they sat on information the Bush admin was illegally spying on US citizens for over a year at the request of the Bush admin).
I think, unfortunately, it’s also why some people turn to really ridiculous sources, because they’re just smart enough to see the bias in legacy institutions, but they don’t have the media literacy to accept what they can research as true from legacy media but also to be skeptical and looking for evidence for what is presented, instead of treating is as fact. This, I think, has fueled the rise in conspiracy theories, from people who know everyone is lying to them, but lack the ability to be able to parse or deal with that in any healthy way. Yes, there is a lot of bias in legacy media, but turning to online media grifters who are selling you survival kits isn’t the healthy or literate solution.
I think there’s a human bias towards certainty, to believing in true facts. research is work, and when it undermines personal certainty, there’s an urge to just go with whoever does seem to be most certain. if you can’t be sure of the facts on a personal level, go with the guy who is loudest and most certain. and because people seeking to relay truth will make room for doubt, conspiracy theory guy wins.
understanding probability helps here - if 90% of climatologists are 90% sure of climate change, their doubt doesn’t make climate hoax guy right. the podcast 538 covers politics, but goes into polling theory, statistics, and probability in ways that make it easier for me to understand and apply in other areas.