#social media literacy

[it-ket]

Is being social media literate actually helpful in achieving quality education?

Social media has been used since a long time ago. While it was initially simpler and more narrow in scope, it has slowly evolved over time. Many users engage with it every day, sharing various pieces of information, both factual and vague. With this recurring event, it can be concluded that having social media literacy can contribute to achieving quality education.

Firstly, what does being social media literate mean? It is the ability to critically, effectively, and responsibly access, use, understand, and engage with media of all kinds. Possessing this skill is not only important for adults but also for children to help them understand and avoid the possible harm social media can bring, especially nowadays when the usage of social media is already widespread and inevitable.

But how does social media literacy exactly help with the achievement of quality education? Firstly, social media shares tons of content and information every day. Being social media literate means knowing that relying on content without doing proper research is not the best option; instead, seeking the truth is the best way to go. If equipped with the proper knowledge, one can determine if the content is factual. Not only are you avoiding being victimized by misinformation, but it also helps enhance certain skills such as critical thinking and analysis. With the countless day-to-day interactions and battles with misinformation, the literacy gained helps with achieving quality education.

Additionally, social media literacy plays a crucial role in combating the dissemination of misinformation online. By empowering individuals with the necessary knowledge and skills to critically evaluate information and verify sources before posting content. In essence, it acts as a protective barrier, shielding others from falling victim into false information.

Thus, social media literacy helps individuals achieve quality education by assuring the legitimacy of information gained and disseminated online.

[animerunner]

Sometimes I swear y’all don’t even want to do basic media literacy with this platforms posts.

Me: Hey sending messaging about questionable tendencies and then doubling down by having a character sacrifice themselve is not going to help kids in a bad place.

Someone: No one commits suicide because the show does something they don’t like.

Me: ?_? That’s not exactly what I said. Having intertwined messaging that your choosing to ignore is not the same as the show making a decision that leans into messaging.

Like they can be but that wasn’t what I was discussing.

[griseldagimpel]

Prescriptive vs Descriptive

In the spirit of us all having better reading compression, consider this: is the tumblr post you're reading prescriptive or descriptive? Is it saying that things ought to be such-and-such way, or is it saying that things are such-and-such way? Is it advocating for an idea or merely presenting facts about what exists?

Now, after you've made that assessment, don't send hate asks to the person.

[rockpapercynic]

The internet is flooded with AI-generated photos and they're getting harder to spot.

Most of the time AI is used for click-farming, but lately images have been used in fake news stories and product scams.

Most important: THINK CRITICALLY. AI will eventually get too good to make obvious mistakes. Being media literate means checking not just if an image is real, but if the source is trustworthy.

If you're not sure, don't share! You might be spreading misinformation.

[terrinakamura]

Social Media’s Impact on Kids – What’s Next for Tech? By Terri Nakamura

Thank you for visiting my blog. Your feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Keeping kids safe on social media. Photo: Unsplash with Andrej Lišakov Social Media’s Impact on Kids – What’s Next for Tech? During my four days at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), I had the opportunity to attend only one panel discussion. I’m grateful that I chose to listen and see this particular one in person. A lengthy queue of eager attendees had formed, all looking forward to hearing…

[sufficientlylargen]

People migrating to Tumblr from other social media sites may not be used to the blatant misinformation that often circulates on Tumblr; this is why it's important to look at the urls of people who post information here. The above post is by tumblr user @facts-i-just-made-up and as such is filled with misinformation:

Tomorrow will be Thursday: False. Thursday happened already, last week.

Cockroaches are active on Thursdays: False. To save processor time, insects are shut down Wed-Fri. You may see pre-rendered placeholder sprites that look like insects, but they aren't real.

A single month can contain well over 2 Thursdays: Technically true, but deeply misleading. Thursdember (the month that is spread out over the year on a roughly 168-hour cycle), generally has more than forty-five Thursdays each year, but it is the only one. No other month ever has more than one Thursday (except on leap years, when October may have two).

Deaths on Thursdays: Mostly False. While there are at least three recorded instances of nuns dying on Thursdays, it is incredibly rare, and poodles do not die at all (they just transcend the mortal plane). Physicist Albert Rose died on July 26th, 1990, which in modern times would likely be called a "Thursday", but the concept wasn't widely developed at that point and most people at the time just considered it an ordinary Jörmungandrsday.

Car accidents on Thursday: This is technically true, but is true for every weekday - each weekday has five times as many car accidents as one fifth of any other weekday because there are four weekdays and car accidents are illegal and therefore impossible on all of them.

Wearing lipstick on a Thursday will almost always result in pigmentary encrustation of the procheilon tissue: False. Procheilon tissue, believed to be a fire-like tissue released during combustion, is an obsolete scientific theory, which was superseded in the 1770s when Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier demonstrated that the weight of the gas consumed by combustion could be measured, leading to the now-common philtrumation theory of combustion.

Many Thursdays are followed by resulting Fridays: False. This is confusing correlation with causation. Thursdays do not result in Fridays; Fridays, being liminal times only loosely anchored to the arrow of time, are frequently responsible for causing earlier Thursdays, but never the other way around.

This is a good example of why it's important to fact-check information that you read on social media.

Thursday Is Coming: What You Need To Know

As many of you know, tomorrow will be Thursday. Many people find themselves unprepared for Thursday and suffer the consequences. Here’s what you need to know to be safe:

Cockroaches are active on Thursdays.

A single month can contain well over 2 Thursdays.

Physicist Albert Rose died on a Thursday, as did several nuns and a poodle.

There are five times more car accidents on every Thursday than on 1/5 of any other weekday.

Wearing lipstick on a Thursday will almost always result in pigmentary encrustation of the procheilon tissue.

Many Thursdays are followed immediately by a resulting Friday.

Be safe this Thursday and remember that no matter what happens, no Thursday to date has lasted over 24 hours. For more information, please consult the Thursday Awareness hotline at 1627987185.

[alethianightsong]

"I miss when movies weren't political-"

ALIEN is about a megacorporation coercing some salvagers into transporting a dangerous creature without telling them what it is, all because the creature could be a great bioweapon for them. When a survivor of this failed transport mission wants reparations, they screw her over to avoid a scandal.

ROBOCOP is about another mega-corporation experimenting with a cop's body and declaring him their property, trying to reduce him to an obedient killing machine who can maintain the status quo for them.

JURASSIC PARK is about a rich billionaire going all out to make a dinosaur-themed amusement park, not caring about the real-world implications of resurrecting giant lizards. He also underpays ONE guy to maintain the entire park's security systems so predictably, that one guy betrays him at a crucial moment.

The best movies weave their politics with plot & character, so you can enjoy them as entertainment but can also notice the themes. Movies without themes wind up being all spectacle and no substance, just noise and color like Michael Bay's Transformers franchise. Yeah, they make money, but they'll be forgotten in 2 generations.

[parasiticstars]

nooooo little chronically online leftist don’t fall for the media’s pervasive purity testing and villainizing that’s specifically made to divide us and keep us fighting amongst ourselves when we should be focusing on getting the boot off our throats

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

“My therapist told me that, according to psychology, girls who often stay up til 3 am for no reason actually show a trauma response. You lacked a loving mother figure in childhood, so you deprive yourself of sleep because you weren’t taught to love yourself.” 

I came across that piece of info on social media recently, and I’d like to offer an addition: 

My therapist told me that, according to psychology, you can make up random things and pass them off as scientific… if you just put enough meaningless phrases in front of it. 

You probably caught the irony here. In fact, “according to psychology” and “my therapist told me” are completely meaningless phrases in my statement here! They make it seem like I’m presenting a scientific fact, but there’s no substance behind them. I’m just telling you my own thought. 

I did it on purpose and wanted you to catch it, but it can be more tricky to spot out there in the wild (or, well, on social media) - because intuitively, that quote up there sounds pretty trustworthy, doesn’t it? We are taught to look for a source and it conveniently provides one for us: psychology. Psychology says this, so it’s legit! 

But phrases like “according to psychology”, “my therapist says” or even “studies say” may only pose as sources. Let’s look into it a bit closer: 

“According to psychology” - Psychology is not really a source that can be quoted like that. Psychology is an immense field of study that covers lots of different areas (biological psychology, neuroscience, social psychology, behavioral psychology etc.), so who or what exactly is being cited here? A specific expert? A specific study? A specific book? 

“My therapist said” - in which context? Therapists usually give advice that’s tailored to the patient’s individual situation which likely looks different to yours (since no two people lead the exact same life), so how do you know this specific piece of information is also applicable to your situation (let alone applicable to everyone)?

The next one is especially tricky:

“Studies say” - studies can be a great source, but which study are we talking about? Who did the study? How was it done? How many people participated in it? Are the results generalizable in the way the post claims? (And before all that: is there even any specific study being cited at all here, or is this just a fully meaningless claim?) 

While we are on the topic of generalization: obviously I’m not trying to make some blanket statement that everyone who ever uses these phrases is a liar with evil intentions. Sometimes we just use simple phrases for complex concepts to make them more accessible or easily digestible, and that’s fine. 

And just as importantly, sometimes we are just human and make some thinking mistakes (such as “this connection my therapist made about MY childhood and MY behavior in adulthood must be applicable to everyone who shows that behavior. Making that connection helped me, so surely I’m helping others by posting about it!”) without any bad intentions. 

I’m just encouraging you to critically think about the information you read or share online - even beyond the basic “is there a source” check. 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[restingsusvibes]

I find it helpful to stop and think "what am I supposed to do with this information? What does the OP want me to do with this information?"

A little piece of advice for Americans navigating what will be an increasing number of posts about US politics in the coming year:

If a post makes you feel angry, upset, and hopeless, while offering no actionable information, scroll on and don't reblog it. I know that is going to feel harsh in some cases. But it's important to spend your political energy on what you can actually do and not be sunk into helpless rage and despair that benefits no one.

[whereserpentswalk]

Just saw a "feminist" video essay (by someone who just happens to only talk about feminism in relation to cishet white able bodied women) say that the Hays Code was good for women because it "prevented them from sexualizing women by preventing onscreen depictions of sex". Never before has a video said something that made me vocalize my disgust of it's takes, but this did it.

I didn't think I would have to say this but if you defend the Hays code you are horrible and not in any way progressive. And if you don't know what it is please look it up because it's probably the most important piece of history when it comes to all media analysis in the western world.

[wolf-tail]

Disco Elsyium is not enough. We need more explicitly socialist fictional media.

This is important from like a serious, anthropological, society-wide reason. Like it or not, you are not going to get any more eople involved in the movement by just shouting "read theory" at everyone.

Yes, reading difficult texts is an important skill, but you are not going to be able unite the worldwide proletariat enough for any substatial revolution if that's literally all you have.

Listen to me.

Literally all people know is capitalism.

Capitalist realism has convinced the people living under it that this is just the natural order of the world, that there is no feasible alternative to it that could ever exist. Capitalism has become so all encompassing and suffocating that it is literally easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Even people who know it is explicitly bad think socialism is an impossible alternative because they have not been allowed to seriously engage with it at all.

In order to make people more willing to look into socialism as a concept, we need to break it into the public conscious. Direct action and praxis is one way. This is going to sound dumb, but fictional media is another.

As much as socialists like to hate on liberals for always viewing the world through the lens of pop culture media (ex: Harry Potter, LOTR, Star Wars, etc.), fictional media is an important and impactful part of our modern society. It has been so for decades, if not centuries.

Fiction not only reflects our society back at us, it can alter it given time and volume. It's some of the earliest media we're exposed to from childhood onward, and helps form the basis of our personalities, worldviews, and relationships to each other.

Fiction forms a huge part of the hegemonic ideas of our society.

Capitalists wouldn't be spending billions of dollars on propaganda movies that glorify the military and other instruments of capitalism and it's reinforcement if it wasn't effective propaganda.

If you get people comfortable enough with engaging with socialism as a fictional concept, you get your foot in the door for opening them up to it in reality.

[browncoatsareinthetardis]

So me and a friend were talking. And we were like why was Liam getting the most hate when 1D ended. And we came to this idea/ conclusion that Liam was the first to pull off the rose colored glasses of what we, the GP, thought of 1D. He was the first to say yeah “if we continued I would have died” and “yeah being in a boyband really f**ked me up” and that stung for directioners. People were mad that they weren’t living all the sunshine and rainbows that we were sold by their media team. We wanted the facade that it was all great. And Liam told us it wasn’t and people were mad.

[fox-teefs]

Guys, people are allowed to like Jimmy 😭 Do not act like we weren’t all simping over William Afton who literally MURDERED MULTIPLE CHILDREN and is responsible for the deaths of his own children, and then go and hate on other people who think Jimmy is a well written villain. I don’t like him for his actions, I like him cus he’s a well written villain and it’s silly to bully him, he’s like a little rat and I love him in that way-

I think it’s absolutely insane that we are like, criminalizing people for enjoying characters that are designed to be hated. Why are we allowed to love William Afton? What about the AM lovers? The sentient robot that killed / enslaved all of humanity?

“B-b-but it’s different!” It’s actually really not… 😭 All these characters are horrible individuals and are still loved by many, yet Jimbalya gets mass hate and people get harassed for liking him, how is that fair?

And technically, if Jimmy is a terrible person, and needs to be hated, so does Curly! He was an accomplice. Anya told him what happened, she confided in him, and he just said he’d “take care of it.” And did nothing, stood by and just let Jimmy keep doing all the horrible shit he did. “Oh, but C-C-Curly is hot…! And… h-he didn’t know..!! He had mental health issues!” So did Jimmy? But that doesn’t excuse him literally doing non consensual shit to Anya, and being mentally ill doesn’t excuse not standing up for your crew members AS A CAPTAIN OF THE SHIP, WHO IS SUPPOSED TO PROTECT HIS CREW. But apparently you people don’t know how to like, handle representation. 😭

“M-media literacy!” People who use this as a means to make harassing other people over a CHARACTER, clearly don’t fucking know what media literacy means. PLEASEEEE let me enjoy a character in peace.

Have a silly picture of “my baby” pregnant because of two other Jimmies. Have a good day.

[justapotato89]

love how the media is posting excessive coverage about Mangione when all it does is fuel the amount of memes and X posts.

You'd figure they'd have accepted it by now that public opinion is in favour of him instead of against, but they continue trying to sway it. They really think that they can undo the effect of decades of denial of basic healthcare facilities and corporatisation of health care with a few extra hours of video coverage of reporters being sarcastic and condemning the popular support of the youth.

Do they have like zero idea of how social media works or-? Every single hour of footage adds like 10K+ memes across the world. The fact that he's the alleged assassin of Thompson is what makes him so appealing to the public. The algorithms are going to recognise the more popular posts, and show them in the feeds. At this rate, finding a jury that is not in favour of him is almost impossible.

[lovely-cherubs]

Am I the only one who thinks that a good portion of the murder drones fandom lacks media literacy? Like some of these takes and opinions seriously make my head hurt. From people saying things like "N is obsessed with Uzi and vice versa" to "N had no character development" and even "Uzi ruined N's character", I'm seriously starting to believe that either people didn't actually watch the show or they watched something completely different.