Fact or Fiction? Navigating Media in the Misinformation Age

Alan Goldenbach: To me, media literacy means being able to figure out what you’re consuming, why it’s important and why somebody is sending it out.

Carin Robinson: It also means engaging material with the awareness that there are multiple sources addressing this topic from other lenses. Media literacy is the humble recognition that you have chosen one source, while there are millions of other sources out there. 

CR: This is a concept we’re all learning together, and we’re functioning from a deficit. It’s not as though previous generations were well versed in the media landscape. There’s just not enough time to catch up with the pace at which information is now available.

AG: That statistic attacks a faulty assumption that a lot of adults have today—thinking kids who grew up with this kind of technology must know how to decipher [media]. It’s a common fallacy that we think younger people just know how to manage this better. 

AG: The ultimate question I want them to answer is, if somebody is giving you a piece of information, how do you know it to be true? Do you know it’s reliable? Skepticism is just healthy doubt until you have credible evidence.

CR: It’s an intellectual exercise that we want students to be excited about. It demonstrates an awareness for the big picture. It’s an incorporation of multiple disciplines here at a liberal arts school. When a student can come and say, “That’s not consistent with what I heard another professor say or what I read in another book,” it often reveals a deeper truth that even I have been blinded to simply because of my own biases.

AG: Our gut instincts are a telltale sign, right? If something doesn’t match up, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but that means you should try to dig a little deeper. Because of the speed that information arrives today, we are instinctively too quick to buy into and accept something. We need to practice slowing down, and I know that’s hard to do in this media environment.

CR: The best way to start identifying misinformation is by comparing it with other sources. We have something known as a confirmation bias. We often self-select into groups, and we self-select news sources that will tell us how smart we already are and will be easy for us to consume. Cognitively, we want to avoid information that conflicts with our predisposition. I would encourage people when encountering information that isn’t consistent with what they already believe to dig into it, and the only way to do that is to consult multiple sources and to be in community with people who don’t look like you, don’t sound like you and don’t agree with you. That is something we welcome in the classroom. 

CR: We’re self-selecting into echo chambers and silos. We’re not being exposed to a diversity of opinions. And so, media not only are telling us what issues to think about—they’re telling us what to think about those issues. We are having an agenda set for us where we’re not necessarily perceiving the most important problems facing our country as a function of what my community is dealing with. It’s what my social media feed is emphasizing, and usually it’s somehow attached to my identity and my consumer behavior. That is something I’m struggling with as I try to speak to the next generation in terms of how to be informed and what should matter.

AG: The simple meaning of the word “news” has changed in the last 25 years. Prior to the digital age, if you owned a printing press or a satellite dish, you were the arbiter of what was newsworthy, what was important to society. Today, every single one of us is, because if you have a social media feed, you can distribute information that you think is important. If it’s important to your followers on social media that you had a ham sandwich for lunch today, then that’s newsworthy to them. The point of the matter is that everybody can control what is important, so if you find an audience of people who all agree this is something that is important, who’s to say that’s not news? We’ve lost control over what news should be, so to speak.

CR: Opinion leaders are something that we talk about in social science and the importance of opinion leaders to help us sort through the information. Average citizens are unable to fully educate themselves on tariffs or criminal justice or the various complex issues that are out there. There are people well suited to be opinion leaders and that sometimes comes in the form of a member of Congress or a community leader. But those are not the people who have the most engaging TikTok feeds, and that’s who we’re now competing with to elevate what’s most important and what should matter. 

AG: The way I approach it in my skepticism—don’t look for a fact checker. You are your fact checker. We need to be aware of what tools are out there. How can you find out who is supporting this organization that’s giving you this information? Who’s funding it? What’s their history? Don’t rely on somebody else to tell you that you should trust this, or you shouldn’t trust that. We need to have those skills ourselves. 

AG: I think the easiest way is to increase awareness. How do you get students to be curious? You can’t force people to be curious, but that’s the one thing I’ve always told students—I want you to be curious. I want you to wonder, how did this information get out there? The internet has given us such a wealth of information. We think we can become experts on anything in two Google searches, and clearly that’s not the case. When we can stop and ask ourselves, how do you know that to be true? I think that’s a good first step. Slowing down is critical for media literacy.

CR: Media ownership is a big element. Who owns the media that you’re consuming? There are about six different companies that own the entire mainstream media universe. Being aware of that will help you slow down, and it doesn’t negate everything the mainstream media says, but it’s something to be aware of. I also want to defend a free press. We need media. I think there are good people who are pursuing journalism for the sake of informing citizens and holding government accountable. With the good has come some bad, and embracing it, being sober with it, all of that takes some work.

Read the full spring 2025 issue of Hood Magazine here.