Why Media Literacy matters in your PLN

– What is media literacy?

Media literacy refers to people’s choice ability, understanding ability, questioning ability, evaluation ability, creation and production ability, and speculative response ability when facing all kinds of media information. Media literacy refers to citizen’s ability to interpret and criticize media information, as well as the ability to use media information for personal life use and social development. It is an important part of civic literacy and civic education in modern society. With the new communication mechanism, social media has a huge impact on the pattern of information communication and has a growing role in real society. The communicational property of social media also put forward new requirements for the media literacy of the public, media operators, government agencies and officials.

– Why is it important?

In the era of entertainment, the public prefers fast-food like reading, the neglect of rationality and logic, and the blind pursuit of emotional resonance has become the key to the success of the Internet celebrity. Whenever the news is twisted, most people are exhaustless happy to be the judges and critics. We often say that idiom, “Rumors stop with the wise.” When mass media and We-media come to our eyes, most of the public seem to be used to passively accepting and listening to them. Nevertheless, readers not only have to equip the ability to classify and screen the content producers with media literacy, but also should maintain a critical and questioning attitude towards social media.

– Why is it dismissed?

In the context of information society and knowledge economy, media literacy is dismissed as users are easily trapped in the feeling of freshness of social media. The emergence of various new media forms provides more communication channels and produces more diverse content. However, the use of these new media and information requires the support of various new technologies. Users need to understand all different digital platforms and media literacy, improve the ability of information dissemination. They need to realize the operation of media information acquisition, selection, analysis, production and dissemination to handle personal affairs. 

Why should you aim for varied views but the factual consensus in your PLN?

The Internet has erected many walls that everyone only cares about their own topics. Since then, people have lived in a parallel universe and have no concern for other people’s world. It is difficult for people to summarize the most important and factual consensus from the perspective of the whole society. In my PLN, I will advise more personal media communication skills involved. For instance, democratic consultation and public decision-making strategy will promote social connection and development in civil society.

Open dialogues about media literacy and factual information can create conflict, why does this happen?

Different people have different cognition, knowledge background and educational level on social media. Social media could have biased in judging things. For example, some people thought the outbreak of COVID-19 was a plot of Bill Gates to eliminate the population of humans. On Feb 13th, 2021, a Texas winter storm caused power outages. They thought it was “fake” snow because people claim the snowballs are not melting after they burned by lighter. People on the Internet claim 5G tower spread the virus and burn it. Do you think it’s the lack of education? How can we popularize common science and control public opinion, refute rumours? Leave it under my blog. 

As the carrier of information dissemination, we must strengthen the digital construction of self-discipline principle and media ethics, and enhance the credibility of the media. We should avoid the excessive commercialization and over-entertainment of media. PLN should carry forward the role of creating compelling and effective communication, and adhere to the correct guidance of public opinion and value orientation. 

What is the benefit of having a PLN that values media literacy? 

At present, the field of the Internet is expanding. With the rapidly increasing number of Internet users and the downward shift of media rights, every individual who has media literacy in PLN has the opportunity to release information. Network problems and crises are becoming more and more profound. Media literacy aims to eliminate the occurrence rate of network attacks, network violence, network terror, privacy leakage, pornographic information, rumours and slander occurrence.  In fact, media literacy has become a new topic in the field of global digital governance, and media literacy education has become an important part of cyberspace governance.